Chapter 87

If Mai had to describe how Tanya looked right now in one word, it was "sore."

Several cracks in the skull, a thoroughly bruised face, and a splitting headache that lasted for days, suggesting some level of brain injury, was not the sort of thing that anyone, even a soldier as tough as her, could just walk off.

The Fire Nation's medical officers were very experienced in treating boulder-related injuries by now, and had told Azula in no uncertain terms that after taking a hit like the one King Bumi had dished out directly to the face, Tanya would be spending the rest of the week resting in bed even if they had to physically strap her to it.

Tanya wasn't exactly in a state to argue with them, given how staying lucid for more than a couple of hours at a time was a challenge in itself for her, but Azula hadn't been happy.

The fact that The Avatar had escaped them hadn't sat well with her at all, and as much as she'd hid it behind a calm facade, Mai knew that she was just itching to get hunting after him again. More than once they toyed with the idea of ditching Tanya in Omashu and pressing on without her, but thankfully a solution had quickly presented itself that made doing so unnecessary.

Using her royal status, Azula had been able to requisition the prototype of a new ground vehicle being sent to the front lines for testing: a monstrous beast of steel and steam much faster than the regular tanks, that'd been designed to quickly run supplies through difficult terrain.

The Tank Train. Tanya could rest inside while she, Azula and Ty Lee rotated between driving shifts. (Though how much rest Tanya could actually get when Ty Lee took the wheel was anyone's guess. That girl was not a natural-born driver.)

However despite being on The Avatar's trail, Azula's mood had yet to improve. Mai was under no illusions as to why. Growing up, she'd gained plenty of insight into the tangled, messy and downright unhealthy relationship that was the friendship, if it could truly be called that, between Azula and Tanya.

Mai was no fool: she'd known from the first day Azula had picked her and Ty Lee to be her friends why the princess of the Fire Nation had singled them out over all others.

They were noble-born, and so possessed enough pedigree to be seen as acceptable company for a princess; they both possessed innate talents for skills that Azula lacked the time to truly master herself but would find very useful; and most importantly they were not fire-benders, and so were unlikely to ever surpass Azula's skill in combat.

When Azula had grudgingly introduced Mai and Ty Lee to Tanya on the day that the blonde girl arrived at the Royal Academy for Girls, making it clear that she was to be welcomed into their friendship group, to say that Mai was surprised was an understatement.

After all, Tanya was the exact opposite of them: born as a dirt-poor orphan; trained in roughly the same skills as Azula; and not only a firebender, but one already capable of fighting Azula to a draw. By all rights she was exactly the sort of person that Azula would consider both beneath her station and a threat to her superiority.

Later, when Tanya had left to explore the school on her own for a while, Azula explained the situation to them in furious whispers: how her father was forcing her to take Tanya into their circle as a punishment for not defeating her at her first tournament. In the privacy of her own thoughts, Mai added this fact to her growing list of suspicions that the Fire Lord was not a good parent.

As they'd all gotten to know her, it soon became clear that the matter was further complicated by the fact that Azula and Tanya were an incredibly bad mix. All of their worst traits: their obsessions with order, strength and control; their perception of people as resources; and of course their respective streaks of cruelty; they saw reflected, rivalled and encouraged in each other.

Yet these similarities also made it difficult for them to recognise how other aspects of their personality were different, and thus fail to truly understand each other.

Tanya, with her surprisingly lack of social awareness, didn't have a clue that each and every one of Azula's sarcastic barbs were anything more than genuinely friendly comments, and that their repeated spars and contests was more than honest competition.

Azula meanwhile was convinced that Tanya was just as sly and manipulative as her, and mistook her attempts at friendship as taunts about a situation Tanya hadn't even noticed.

Perhaps in another world, where neither had been shaped into unwitting rivals and pitted against each other by the Firelord, they could have been real friends? Alas, it would never be so in Ozai's world. Here Azula would always see Tanya as the one challenge she could never surpass, and Tanya would forever remain clueless that her closest friend actually hated her.

The reason why Azula was so frustrated now, and had been so for a while now according to Ty Lee, was that even though she'd been officially put in charge of their group by the Fire Lord, it was obvious that Tanya was still beyond her control. Omashu had made that clear.

Even though it had ended poorly, nobody would deny that it had been Tanya, not Azula, who'd been in command of the city. Sure Tanya followed any order Azula directly gave her, but only because she wanted to, rather than because she felt like Azula was actually in a position to boss her around.

And when the situation took a turn for the worst Tanya didn't hesitate to step up and assume command for herself without even stopping to ask Azula's opinion.

Because Tanya didn't fear Azula. She never had. She didn't seem to fear anyone beside Ozai himself, and that knowledge burned Azula like no fire ever could.

The vehicle shook and rocked violently as it smashed head first through a row of trees, and the sound of something bumping against the metal floor, followed by a groaning "oww…" echoing from the carriage behind alerted them that Tanya had been thrown out of bed by the force of it. "Oops. Sorry" Ty Lee apologised sheepishly from behind the wheel.

Azula shot Mai a quick glance, her narrowed eyes silently conveying the message "go deal with it."

With a heavy sigh, Mai stood up and went to check on Tanya.

The carriage that Tanya lay in was a VIP guest carriage: used when high ranking officers or noblemen needed to be transported via the tank train. It consisted of four small but well adorned rooms, each of which was claimed by a member of their group.

Despite being as well made and luxurious as was practically possible, there was no getting around there simply wasn't much room in a train carriage to work with, and so everything had been packed closely together.

Unfortunately for Tanya, that meant that being thrown out of bed by the previous impact had caused her to collide with the door of her room and push it open. Lying face-down on the door, tangled in a mess of bedsheets and a mop of her own uncombed hair, Tanya certainly did not look the part of the dread admiral who struck fear into the hearts of the nation's enemies.

"Visha? What time is it?" Tanya mumbled blearily into the floor.

Mai sighed again. Whenever the effects of her concussion took hold, Tanya kept mistaking her and Ty Lee for someone called Visha. Mai had absolutely no idea who that was, and was beginning to suspect that it was some sort of imaginary friend. "No Tanya, it's me. Mai."

Tanya groaned into the carpeted floor. "I need a coffee."

"You need to go back to bed and sleep, not try and keep yourself awake." Mai countered.

"But there's urgent work to do!"

"Which we've got handled. Stop fretting. We've picked up The Avatar's trail heading towards Ba Sing Se, and with the progress we're making we'll have caught up to him in about half a dozen days."

"You're missing the point!" Tanya growled, trying to push herself up with her arms. Yet her sense of balance was still terribly out of whack, and all she managed to do was slump gracelessly onto one side. That didn't serve to take any of the angry wind out of her sails however.

"He's got the backing of those damn spirits behind him! And as long as he does, no matter how many times we catch him or beat him down, as long as there's the slightest possibility for him to escape he'll always slip the net somehow!"

"Calm down. Getting worked up isn't going to help your head heal up any faster." Mai reprimanded stoically.

"You know it's funny: for all that you were raised by the fire sages, I didn't expect you to be the type to blame anything on the will of the spirits. You've always been so practical. Sometimes I suspected that you didn't even really believe in them."

Tanya snorted and rolled onto her back, glaring spitefully up at the ceiling. "Oh, I believe in them alright. I believe they're the most selfish, arrogant, manipulative assholes in existence: one of them in particular!"

Mai wasn't often the expressive kind, but even she couldn't help the flash of surprise that crossed her face. Everybody believed in the spirits, and although the Fire Nation had become much more apathetic to them in recent years she'd never heard of anybody actively disliking them before. One or two of the nastier ones, sure, but never the spirits as a collective. "You sound as if you've met them before."

Tanya frowned. "I-... no, ignore me. This concussion is just playing with my head." She looked away, and Mai's instincts flared at the suspicious motion. Tanya was hiding something, she was sure of it.

"The only spirits I can say I've ever really met in this life were the ocean and m-..." She trailed off, staring blankly at the wall for a few seconds, then suddenly sat up with a burst of energy!

"The Ocean and Moon Spirits!"

...

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