Thanks to ReadHead, and TacitSoliloquy for help beta reading and editing.
I’m going to try to post this up on SpaceBattles, RoyalRoad, FanFiction, and maybe AO3.
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Fire Lord Zuko, Son of Ozai and Ursa
Zuko, much to his horror, was starting to understand Ozai’s stance on burning people that displeased him. As he listened to the Earth Kingdom diplomats demanding — no, more like complaining, in the most long-winded way possible, about everything they could, it was all he could do to not fantasize about burning the infuriating men. He missed his ship, where he could leave everything to Uncle and just take a nap in peace.
Just as Zuko was starting to think about throwing the crown back at his crazy sister, finding a new boat, chasing Aang down, and then proceeding to beat him up for talking him into becoming Fire Lord, the professional whiner-in-chief mercifully stopped his whinging and got to the point. This session of listening to the worst speaker the Earth Kingdom could send to harass him was different than the usual demands for increased reparations and the heads of whatever general that got accused of war crimes that Zuko never heard of.
“In conclusion, His Highness King Gōngjù Dà of Yu Dao demands that the Fire Nation stops all attacks on the newly liberated territories and pulls out all citizens of the Fire Nation!”
The demand is not as stupid as most other things he heard out of the Earth Kingdom’s diplomats, which said a great deal about the usual crap he forced himself to personally listen to in the name of “healing relationships”. He understood now why diplomatic relations were originally cut off: despite representing a people best known for their love of rock, these diplomats were the least direct people he had ever met.
He missed haggling with Hakoda and Sokka over fishing rights, and then getting drinks afterwards. Zuko decided that he would personally “oversee the reparations” going to the south pole. Those “snow savages” at least knew how to talk like normal people. Their “civilized” northern cousins, on the other hand, were almost as bad as the endless parade of Earth diplomats Zuko was forced to listen to.
No, Zuko could not just go and “pull out” those people; the Fire Navy had already gone and pulled out everyone that would leave voluntarily (including quite a few earth benders) when he ceded back most of the disputed territory. Now, the former colonies were solely populated by those that had refused to abandon their homes, the homes their families had inhabited the last two to seven generations and Zuko would not stoop to kidnapping civilians because some jackass of a petty king hates that some of them don’t like getting pushed around and can throw sparks! Zuko had already tried to throw Aang at the problem and it had seemed to work, but now he's hearing this inane, overly long drivel yet again!
Now, how to say all of that diplomatically?
“No… The Fire Nation has already pulled out all Fire citizens. The only people that remain are those that do not recognize Our divine right to rule, and have chosen to stay under the aegis of The Earth Kingdom! That you are not able to control your own citizens is not the problem of the Fire Nation! Now is that all?” Apparently, it was. As the fuming diplomat left, Zuko thought that he might need to take a few more lessons on diplomacy.
Maybe he would, after he got all the new refugees from the Colonies settled, the fleet downsized and made into new factories, made sure the current factories are not polluting the environment too much, finished purging out all the Ozai loyalists, helped his crazy sister become less crazy, saw if he could fix his relationship troubles with Mai, find the time to go to the Earth Kingdom and apologize to Song for stealing her ostrich horse, and get all the war reparations settled without bankrupting the nation… Maybe then, he’d take lessons in how not to lose one’s temper with infuriating, mewling diplomats.
Why had he agreed to be the Fire Lord again?
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Dà Gōngjù
Dà Gōngjù was displeased about the reply he received from the Fire Lord.
“You are telling me that the Fire Lord does not recognize anyone that refused to move back to the Fire Islands when their navy came the first time as citizens of the Fire Nation, because they don’t recognize his right to rule, and furthermore he claims that… they are citizens of the Earth Kingdom?” It was baffling. He had never heard of a lord just… letting go of peasants.
…Maybe the rumors of overpopulation are true and they don’t want too many peasants dirtying their islands up? Yes, that makes the most sense. Well, now he has to deal with all the uppity peasants left behind by the Ash Bringers. Maybe they will stop being uppity with a few demonstrations of his majesty? Yes, that's what he would do, some floggings, hang up some gibbets, set down some pillories, so on and so forth… After all, it works for earth peasants, it should work for fire peasants.
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Lóng Qíbīng
When the great war ended and Lóng Qíbīng was discharged from the Yu-Yan, he was pretty happy. They had let him keep all the war kit he had been issued, including a mighty War Cock - the best bow he’d ever used - and the nice camouflaged armor he had just been allocated before the end of the war. He was pretty sure that they did it because the Fire Army didn't want to give him or his brothers in arms severance pay for the sudden unemployment.
He can’t really blame them when those crazy shits on the Home Islands decided to burn down all the farmland in the Earth Kingdom STARTING IN THE COLONIES, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT YOU EVIL STUPID FUCKS!
So… when he’d been discharged, Lóng decided to stay in his homeland of the Fire Colonies. He knew good hunters would be needed after the loss of so much of the crop, thanks to that crazy monarch. So, he’d gone out into the wilds to get some game. After a mildly successful hunt, he headed towards Yu-Dao to see if he could sell his take, where he’d happened upon a strange public meeting. He was surprised to see the Avatar himself, and some of his companions, up on a stage giving a speech about healing relationships and forgiving past grudges. The Avatar had talked about the friends he used to have in all of the Nations, and his hope to see bonds such as theirs flourish once again, and to be patient with the changes they would start to see as the Earth kingdom began retaking control of the former Fire Colonies. What the Avatar had lacked in oratory skills, he made up for with sheer enthusiasm, not to mention stopping the exceptionally stupid burning of the farmland that his people needed to not starve to death! So Lóng had decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to use the patience a good hunter needs.
Next, after Lóng helped make sure the biggest city in the colonies would not starve, he started to drift his way back home. The first quarter of his journey was pretty nice, the small towns and villages he visited appreciated the meat and herbs he hunted and gathered (especially the ladies).
The real trouble started almost a year after The War ended. It started small, with pillories suddenly appearing in towns. Lóng remembered the Avatar talking about taking the new changes with patience. Sure, getting stuck in a pillory was humiliating, but it could be better than a heavy fine, and he decided to ignore that it was largely Fire Blooded in the stocks; after all, Lóng could admit that most of his fellow Fire descendants, outside of the military at least, were used to being first-class citizens and could be chafing under the new government.
Then, Lóng started noticing more Earth soldiers than were strictly necessary were patrolling the streets of all the towns he was visiting, but… maybe the Earth Kingdom was just being a bit slow with their demilitarization. Lóng started losing his patience when he started to see the soldiers acting increasingly like occupiers, but he decided to give it time. Things would perhaps calm down once The War had receded further into the past; Only a year ago, after all, everyone was still doing their best to kill each other. It would take time for things to normalize after all those hard feelings.
When Lóng was asked by a “very friendly” widow if he could help fix up their home a bit and bring in some meat for her and her kid, he was happy to spend an extra week or two helping her out. When he returned from his hunting trip to find her in a pillory, Lóng finally lost his patience with the Earth Kingdom completely when he learned that she had been put in the stocks after she refused an earth soldiers proposition, and had been arrested the next day for unspecified charges. The widow was less friendly after that but was still grateful for his help, and Lóng took it as his cue to leave when her brother arrived to help her take care of her kid.
After that little episode, Lóng decided he needed to stop meandering and hurry home to his father and sister. He could almost hear Father saying that ‘their family still has a duty to their subjects even if they lack the recognition of the Earth Kingdom’, not to mention that Lóng’s own sister was close to coming of age, and with the occupation becoming more brutal by the day Lóng knew he needed to be there for his family!
And so, Lóng ceased visiting every hamlet he came across and started stopping only for rest, food, and emergencies. It took Lóng less than a quarter of the time he spent on his wanderings to close the distance to his home of Hǎigǎng. The settlement had been founded by an ancestor of his; When Lóng had turned fourteen he had been given a copy of the founder’s journal to read. Instead of the boring old document he’d expected, it had read more like one of those funny plays where they had to use a whole team of fire benders just for all of the explosions than a journal. Lóng first thought that Ancestor YěBīng was full of shit and did nothing in his free time but invent lies and tall tales and write them down. When Lóng started looking up the events in outside sources, most of what he found surprisingly indicated that most of what he had read had actually happened, just like Ancestor YěBīng had written.
When Ancestor YěBīng finally retired from service he was given the land pension of sixty men, and with all of his war buddies they had enough to make themselves a fief and nominated Ancestor YěBīngto lead, Lóng is pretty sure that decision was mostly due to Ancestor YěBīng having the most land to his name already.
Lóng had dreams of earning more land to add to the family estate when he enlisted, but the war had ended before he got the chance to fight in a proper battle, so most of the action he’d seen was against some irregulars. Well, that and the memorable occasion some mad bastard dressed up as the Blue Spirit from that crap play from Ember Island had snuck into the middle of Pohuai Stronghold and actually escaped with the Avatar! Lóng had been decidedly less than happy with that lunatic’s success back then, but now he was happy that the Avatar had escaped since he’d ended up stopping the old Fire Lord, sorry the “Phoenix Lord”, when he’d almost caused a continent-wide famine by trying to burn down all the damn farmland while starting with his own fucking subjects!
How no one fragged the crazy fucker when he tried to do that would be a question that Lóng would ask over and over in his dreams, and would certainly bring shame to the Fire Army for centuries to come!
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Lóng Qíbīng
As Lóng finished his story, he looked to the new traveling companion he had found on the side of the road, accepting another cup of the best damn tea he had ever had!
“Thank you, Mushi. I’m glad I decided to stop at your campfire instead of trying another forced march!”
“You’re welcome, young man, though there is no need to thank me. Tea is always best enjoyed with the company of others and the stories you can hear from strangers are one of life’s greatest joys - not to mention you pointed out that the plants I was picking were poisonous!”
Lóng gave the old man a big grin, before asking a follow-up question. “By the way, how long were you out of the Army for, Graybeard?”
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It took Mushi a moment to respond. “Ah, may I ask how you picked up on that?”
Lóng replied. ”You mean other than your obvious Fire Nation ethnicity? It’s harder to find a Fire National that hasn't served in some way, especially with all of the conscription by the end of the war. But what really gave you away was that you understood all of the modern Army jargon I used, plus the bit of Navy lingo I picked up in my home port.”
The elderly man gave Lóng a smile that looked almost proud before answering. “Oh, it was about six or seven years ago, after The Siege ended. I turned in my officer's commission after ‘The Dragon of the West’ lifted The Siege, though I did spend some time on a mostly civilian ship as a favor. Also, you can call me Uncle, most of the young people I meet tend to.”
Lóng took a long sip of tea to help him build up the courage to ask. “May I ask…”
The graybeard, now named Uncle, gave Lóng a knowing look before answering with a decidedly subdued tone. “Yes… I have been on more battlefields than I had hot meals, and I can tell you that sieges are the worst of them. From beginning to end it is awful, just awful, with the only hope to avoid it for both sides, is that the defenders may surrender! I’ve also been to every capital city of the world at least once, and I can tell you that Ba-Sing-Se is the Greatest among them. It’s less of a city and more of a province surrounded by the mightiest walls ever sat upon the earth! Ba-Sing-Se is fully self-sufficient, at least for food and the Great Wall is too long to fully surround and it has access to a great river, so The Dragon knew that the only way to take the Great City was through assault!
I’m vastly simplifying the strategy used but I will cover the most important things. The length of the wall also meant that the Earth Kingdom could not fully man it, so The Dragon decided to divide his forces and hit the wall from multiple directions, forcing the Earth Kingdom to also divide their own hopefully smaller force, and make a breach in the wall, then sally through before the Earth Kingdom could plug it back up. Now everyone knew that the blood price would be high before the first battle, but it was far, far higher than our worst nightmares! Everyone lost friends, comrades, brothers, and sisters in arms!
But a breach in the wall was finally made after six hundred days, the fighting for the breach was some of the most brutal of war, only the genocide of the Air nomads could beat it! But after another two days of consistent fighting, We made it through the Outer Wall! But when General Iroh finally went over the butcher's bill for the battle he saw his own son among the casualties. Now some will tell you that the reason General Iroh lifted The Siege was that he was too weakened by his grief to keep fighting. But I know his reasoning for retreating was more than just that - his army was too weakened, and the morale for his men was as low as his. They could not advance over ground prepared by the Earth Kingdom in their weakened state, and the strength of the Fire Nation was positively hemorrhaging, so his weakened army couldn’t have defended the breach against a motivated enemy. Now, what do you do when you can't advance, and you can’t stay and hold?”
Lóng responded, “If you cannot advance and you cannot hold, you retreat.” When he finished he stared into the fire for a moment and just tried to imagine the hell on earth that had just been described to him and felt the sheer tragedy of the loss and the waste. The dull feeling of loss and remorse cut even deeper, after listening to a veteran of The Siege itself describe it for him. Lóng stayed quiet for some time before turning back to his senior and bowing low. “Thank you Uncle, for educating this junior on a subject so sensitive to you. I will never forget the wisdom you shared with me.”
Uncle slapped his knee and loudly exclaimed “BAH! Stop with the formality! If I wanted it, I would go back to the Home Islands, where I’m surprised that head injuries aren't more common with how hard and often you're expected to dirty your forehead! Now, I have some nice calming Jasmine Tea, and you can tell me about the adorable little sister you hinted at while I pore us some, Little Dragon.”
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Lóng Qíbīng
DànYā had always been a special and rather peculiar child. DànYā’s was a troubled birth that took our mother; she was a small and sickly infant, but I can barely remember her ever crying, even when she fell down the stairs once. She also took a rather long time to begin talking, though I would make the bet that she could have started earlier than she did. From one day when she was three, I think, she would only gesture and babble single words at you, the next day she would talk in mostly complete sentences! Though she had this adorable tendency to pronounce things wrong, she almost always pronounces her own name as Tàn-Yā, (less adorable is her calling her beloved brother “sickness”). I know because she used to follow me around everywhere like her namesake, asking me never-ending questions when she finally decided to start talking in complete sentences.
“JíBìng: what’s that animal? JíBìng: Why are people only wearing red or green? JíBìng: Why can that man juggle fire? JíBìng: Why can that man break stone walls with headbutts? JíBìng: Why are these people bowing to us? JíBìng: Why do the green people do all the lowly work? JíBìng: Why are you hugging me so hard?”
You don’t know how hard it is to have to explain social and ethnic inequality to a 4-year-old! Little Tani is the most stone-faced kid I have ever seen, but when I told her why Earth Bloods do the worst jobs you could see the offense in her eyes! When she found out that Hǎigǎng is special in that we tend to not treat you as differently for your ancestry than most other Fire Nation controlled regions do she looked so angry. I’m still convinced that you would have seen an adorable fair-haired and gray-eyed child running around hitting Fire Nobles in their soft bits if I let her go at that moment. Though she calmed down when I told her it was steadily getting better, in the colonies at least. I hope that resentment does not build too much with all the unrest happening, though from what I’ve seen the Earth Kingdom soldiers seem to treat the earth blooded almost as bad, so I expect them to close ranks with the people that they share cultural ties with.
I left for the military when I was sixteen and haven't seen her in person for about five or six years, but we kept sending letters to each other, although the letters stopped coming over a year ago. I hope it’s only the mail service getting the short end of the stick with the navy losing so many ships from that cluster fuck up north. One of the last letters she sent me from Hǎigǎng said that Father was sending her to the Home Islands for schooling and even managed to get her enrolled at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls. She also sent me the best letters from there, I always knew that “Lóng DànYā” was the smartest, and most gifted in her generation! It’s such a pity that she lacks Agni’s gift.
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Lóng DànYā
The long travel to the capital of the empire of my birth for my third life gave me plenty of time to think about my new circumstances and how I got here.
My fully justified anger with Being X has begun to wane after a decade of his absence. The last time I saw him was when I died over Norden when I failed in my desperate plan to hold out against a full squad of Nordic aerial mages by myself. I don’t know for how long I floated in the nothingness until Being X showed himself.
“There you are, Atheist. I find myself rather displeased to find you here. None of my plans accounted for you dying this early: The earliest you were supposed to die was while testing experimental computation orbs, not in a suicide mission ordered by an imbecile!”
I found myself more bemused than anything. I haven't seen him since the end of my first life, when he complained to me about being overworked and unappreciated then “threw” me into my second life over thought crime. I had started to wonder if he was just a figment of my imagination, but it seems that he’s not after all. It had taken me some time to respond to that last complaint.
“You claimed to be all-powerful, but if you were, why can’t you account for this? I thought that the Abrahamic God was supposed to be all-knowing.”
Being X, appearing to me in the guise of an old man with a massive beard and impressive mustache, pinched his nose with a great sigh before looking back at me. He waved his hand and I was once more in the form of Tanya instead of a drifting ball of consciousness. While I was getting reused to being a person with arms and legs again, Being X waved his hand again and two comfy chairs appeared. He took a seat before waving to the other across from him. It took me some time before I regained the motor control to flop onto the chair, Being X patiently waiting until I was comfortable before continuing.
“I am all-powerful in this universe right now, as I am here right now, but now that I’m here I lose sight and the ability to interact with other universes, and I have to manage more than just this universe. I have to deal with thousands of different universes, all with different rules that I have to follow. I sent you to this specific universe because the rules here are some of the loosest in the set of universes that I personally oversee. So, I am more unrestrained here and can use more of my almighty power. But, my almighty power can still be beaten with human free will, especially when I’m not here to run damage control whenever one of you mortals do things differently than I expected in the ten years going on thousands that I have been gone.”
“What I originally saw and planned for was to see you facing a desperate war as a half-trained conscript when you turned fourteen, give you some power advantage based on my grace then send you out. What actually happened was you volunteered for the military at the age of eight with no one stopping the young child from enlisting, the best they did was only plan to have you trained as an artillery spotter until you turned fourteen. Then an imbecile decided that sending a small child to her death to buy time was a good idea. Your sacrifice only bought the artillery two extra minutes before the half-strength aerial mage squad destroyed them. The Imbecile that sent out a small child to die in a panic was court-martialed and shot. I plan to give him an extra special hell for this by the way.”
“With your death, Tanya Degurchaff became a martyr for Nordic aggression, the ‘Legadonia Entente Alliance’ toppled in a revolt, when the goal of distracting their populace from their corruption failed and the military lost faith in the government after they took horrendous losses during a flag-waving march. Germania and the now named Legadonia Republic then negotiated for the disputed territory. Germania let them take it, and not invade them for an all-in alliance against the Albian backed Francois that invaded as soon as the Germanian control reinforcement army moved to respond to the north.”
When Being X finished it took me some time to find my voice again. “What was the point of sending me there in the first place?”
“To see if your predictions about human nature were correct, and to teach you not to mouth off to extra-dimensional beings that claim to have power over life and death! The war still went on, by the way. The experiment shows that when I personally give individuals blessings they usually grow to become more pious, though whether they treat me as their God, or Satan or something like you do is around fifty-fifty.”
He went into much detail about his “experiments of the human condition”, but I remained confused about why he felt the need to blab on and on about all of this unnecessary and useless theosophical information. Though, knowing that the guy who refused my request for retreat got shot was admittedly a pleasure to learn.
“Now, do you want to know about anything else?”
“What are you going to do to my soul?”
“I was originally going to erase your memories and reincarnate you as foul-smelling grass when we were done, but now I’m bored of this and it took me way too long to find you here and it annoyed me.”
Then Being X stood up from the chair, an otherworldly wind started to play with his beard and robes as he spoke.
“I curse you to keep your memories after death for as long as you refuse to repent and ask my forgiveness.”
When he finished his overdramatic display he walked up to my limply setting form, gently pecked me up then.
“I give you about four millennia until you pray to me for death.”
He adjusted his hold on my still limp form.
“Now, YEET!”
Then the bastard threw me like a fucking football while saying something silly!
As I sit in the ship’s cabin brooding about just how he humiliated me, my anger at Being X is rekindled, and my will to have my revenge against that petty bastard is restored! I apparently have all the time I could ever ask for to find a way to get back at him! “HAHAHAHAHAHA” He will beg me for mercy before the end! I sure as hell won’t ever pray to that preachy bastard but by the time I’m done with him, he’ll call ME God! “HAHAHAHAHAHA”
My vengeance shall be the sweetest once completed! “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA”
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Lóng DànBīng
I go and check on my daughter when I hear her (maniacal laughter) sweet giggles, when I look into her cabin she seems to be in the middle of one of her thinks. She’s going to be the smartest Lóng in the history of our family! “HAHAHAHAHAHA” NO ONE, well look down upon the name of Lóng with such amazing children to our name! ”HAHAHAHAHAHAHA” (clears throat)
I hope she makes friends in the Home Islands. She always had trouble with making friends back home and she’s been awfully lonely with her big brother leaving for the military. How no one could see how amazing my daughter is and become her friend still confounds me. With her late mother dying in childbirth and with my noble duties Qíbīng has always been the closest to her. When she calms down I move into the doorway and ask.
“My darling daughter, what is so amusing to you?”
She looks up from a table and shows me a letter that she’s been saving to read while traveling to ‘Capital City’
“This letter JíBìng sent me, he’s describing how most of the ‘proper’ nobles are washing out of his special boot camp in the most humorous ways”
“Ah, yes your brother does have a gift with humor, enough to strike at you with it from across the seas it seems.”
I hope all of the long-winded speech practice will be enough for DànYā to fit in with her peers, it’s exhausting but she will have enough things about her that the noble’s from the Fire Islands will look down on her. Not forever though… They will learn… They will all learn. “HAHAHAHAHAHA”
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Lóng DànYā
I patiently wait for my father to calm down from his newest laughing fit. He sure is giggly today, it seems that he’s in a good mood with him securing me a place at the ‘Fire Academy for Girls’ just the thoughts of the connections I can make there is making me smile.
The trip seemed to fly by while spending some quality time with my father. He is the perfect man in my opinion! Always leading everybody competently, and even making time for me. He is the greatest argument for monarchy I have ever seen, now if only we could get all the rest of the useless nobles out of the way for the more competent! But I don’t see that happening anytime soon, they are strong in their power here.
Nothing of note happens until the second week of school. Until that girl, Azula and her two friends approach her. I don’t know much about them except that Azula is some kind of high noble. She then abruptly stops in front of me place’s one fist on her hip, then uses the other to point at me.
“My name’s Azula, and you're going to be my friend now!”
I stare at her bemusedly for a few moments, the silence starts to get awkward and she starts to fidget in place. I don’t think the child is good at making friends, the quiet one seems to only follow her around for her high rank, and the loud one that looks to be holding in laughter seems the charismatic sort where she’s already your friend. So I say and do the only things that come to mind.
“Hello, My Name is Lóng DànYā! Oh, this is rather swell, Father will be oh so pleased that I succeeded in making friends!”
While she is surprised by my affirmation I quickly move up to her and give her a big hug, while the loud one gets her other side. The both of us stare expectantly at the quiet one until she finally moves to join us. Azula never manages to form a response, she seems to be touch starved, that’s bad for child development!
“You appear to be touch starved, now don’t you fretter new companion! I shall endeavor to make sure you have as many hugs as you need!”
The quiet one is the first to answer my declaration in a monotone.
“Yes, Azula needs more hugs, no matter what she says, she’s just embarrassed.”
The loud one follows.
“Oh, that’s why she’s always so prickly, she never gets enough hugs! DON’T WORRY AZULA WERE YOUR FRIENDS AND WE'LL MAKE SURE YOU ALWAYS HAVE ENOUGH HUGS!”
The child in our arms goes limp and says.
“Oh No by Agni, What have I done?”
It seems it’s worse than I originally thought with so much denial.