We Didn't Start The Fire (It's All Very Legal)

by BoliTheSenate

Summary:

What if Zuko actually DID get himself adopted by a Nice Earth Kingdom Family?

And also everyone else he ever meets. Because lets be real, he is incredibly adoptable. Even if that means that by Fire Nation Law, the Fire Sages have to update the Royal Familytree every ten-or-so minutes.
At least succession s guaranteed now, right?

In which everyone has a grand 'ol time except Ozai, who somehow lost his rightful place as Fire Lord to an Earth Kingdom peasant after banishing his useless son, and Jee, who has to deal with being adopted by a Great Spirit (and also the rest of the madness. his prince keeps getting adopted by people. this is a problem).

Notes:

Listen

I've had the truly horribly written outline for this for at least three years now. And now i figured "why should i finish any of my already started fics when i could begin a NEW project?!"
and so, here we are.

This is definitely inspired by Embers and probably an *assortment* of Muffinlance's fics, but i have no clue anymore which ones, so if anything seems familiar that's why.
I also have no idea anymore what's canon and what's fanon, so.... fun times. I make everything up as i go. It's worked for me so far and i sure ain't stopping now.

Don't come for me

 

uuuuh, also; this is set at some very ambiguous point after Zuko's ship got exploded and Zhao tried to kill the moon, but this time Uncle didn't get to come with Zuko, so he's alone in the Earth Kingdom from the start.

Chapter 1: A Concussion By Any Other Name...

Ever heard the saying “life finds a way”?

Well, (Ex) Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, long was his suffering, sure had. Multiple times. On his ship. Mostly during pai-sho night.

When Uncle had been entirely unhelpful at explaining how he won every single round.

And now, the disembodied echo of his Uncle’s rumbling once again sounded in his ears, accompanied by the loud ringing of his concussion and the concerned questions of the two, slightly blurry earth kingdom peasants bent over him.

Weird. He looked around. Truth be told, it was more of a listless rolling over of his head than anything else (from an outside perspective it must have looked like he fell unconscious again, because there were calloused hands lightly patting his cheek).

Zuko was too concussed to even flinch.

How wonderful.

Before he did lose consciousness for real, another little voice popped up in the back of his mind.

Oh look, Zuzu, a nice earth kingdom family. Maybe they’ll adopt you.

Real helpful, Azula. Real helpful.

And those were the last thoughts Zuko had before the white (why was there so much white in the Earth Kingdom) fully encumbered his vision.

…

Here was the list of things that Zuko knew:

One, he was definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent not welcome in the Fire Nation anymore. That much he had gathered with the whole ‘Zhao (may he rest in pieces) actively trying to kill him in plain daylight (or moonlight, whatever)’.

Two, he was in the Earth Kingdom. The lack of posters of his father disappointedly staring down on him from random walls was proof enough.

Tree, he was still concussed. Contrary to what his old ship’s (may it also rest in pieces) healer-slash-second-engineer had been proclaiming, did he know very well when something was wrong with his body. He simply chose to ignore it most of the time.

Which brought him to the more extensive list of things he didn’t know:

How his Crew was doing. He’d seen Jee (who currently was of indeterminable rank, so Zuko was just gonna call the man by his name) together with Uncle trying to stop Zhao (who was very dead and as such also didn’t have a rank Zuko had to call him by) from being a complete and utter moron and murdering the Moon with capital M.

Why the moon had been a fish. Because, really?? Didn’t the Water Tribes eat fish??!?

How Uncle was doing. Granted, same as with Jee above, he’d been in good (read: trustworthy) during his last sighting, so…

What had happened to his stolen-not-borrowed ostrich-horse. Poor girl had spooked and it was definitely not her fault that Zuko was in this predicament now. After all, which idiot bent cobblestone on a busy road?

Apparently an idiot who was about ten years old and currently sniffling wetly at the side of Zuko’s sick bed. Which was another question that occupied the former Prince’s mind: Why was that brat here?

Actually, that was a question he could even guess the answer for. Because judging from how similar the boy looked to the portly woman who just had entered the room through a beaded curtain, they were mother and son (or maybe grandmother and grandson, he knew first hand that sometimes facial features tended to skip a generation). Said woman was carrying a large earthenware (ha!) bowl with a slightly steaming liquid of unidentifiable colour and was currently making a beeline for Zuko.

The earth kingdom boy that had been staring at him from puffy eyes, startled and ran over to the woman and hid his face in her green skirts, mumbling something in what must have been the local dialect because Zuko understood nigh nothing. So much for the usefulness of learning languages from his tutors… So he opted for simply staring at them from his cot. He didn’t even scowl, because scowling hurt his brain at the moment. Which was honestly the most horrible thing to happen to him in the last few... hours.

Hm, not the best of statistics, if he was being candid.

Then again, there had been worse.

Thus, thinking about people like a certain maybe-cursed cabbage merchant, Zuko leaned back and let the gentle annoying fussing of the earth kingdom peasants wash over him. He was too out of it to retain most of what happened during that indeterminable amount of time, but in retrospect she must have, for one, make him drink whatever concoction she had been carrying upon entrance. She also probably asked his name, because that’s a thing people do, but he couldn’t for the life of him say what he answered with.

Hopefully he had lied.

Alas, he strongly suspected that he hadn’t.

The woman said something to him. Judging from her worried face and raised eyebrows, it was either a question or a rhetorical question. Both of which Zuko did know were generally answerable by smiling politely and nodding (hm, maybe court lessons hadn’t been completely useless after all).

For a split second (maybe more, maybe less, time truly was a funny thing when you were concussed), the woman looked concerned, but them she decided against her concernedness and turned to do… something.

Whatever she did, it did necessitate her to take Zukos hand and press one of his fingers (that felt strangely detached, probably not a good sign) into a thingy and then onto another thingy and she said something again.

And that was the point where Zuko drifted off again.

(His dreams were filled with multicoloured ostrich-horses with human hands as feet dancing around a kettle full of bubbling liquid and after some time Zuko realized he was the liquid and tried to run away, but suddenly Uncle was there and wanted to make tea with him to oil Jee’s tsungi horn and then Azula was there dressed in earth kingdom attire trying to sell him cabbages.)

When he finally woke up again, he was drenched in sweat.

At the time he finally woke up for real, aka woke up and wasn’t suffering from blunt force trauma induced wooziness anymore, it was no understatement to say that Prince(?) Zuko of the Fire Nation, Son of Fire Lord Ozai and Fire Lady Ursa, was surprised to learn he’d been adopted by the earth kingdom lady (her name was Chul, that was another thing he learned).

Which paved the way for a new question:

How and when had Azula developed the ability to predict the future and did the Fire Sages know of it?

Chapter 2: The Iroh School Of Being Worried About Your Wayward Nephew

Notes:

listen, the only thing i'll *gladly* take from canon is Zuko constantly almost giving Iroh a worry-induced heartburn.

Dear Uncle

Iroh squinted at that. His nephew never used pleasantries, whether in yelling proclaiming orders, nor in written missives.

Chol makes me write this. She says this is how you start a letter. Something about it being good manners.

Iroh’s spine straightened. Who was this Chol and why was the woman giving orders to his nephew?!

I’m fine, I did get a concussion because Hwan scared Soup with cobblestones though. But they gave me this weird soup that really helped! I got better way quicker than that time Azula dropped a flowerpot on my head during tag.

Iroh frowned. There was so much context missing.

Okay, Chol said just now that you wouldn’t know what I am writing you about. So Hwan is her son (the tenth if you count me as well), she took him in after his dad died due to Swamp-Fever. He’s pretty okay when he isn’t scaring Soup. Oh yeah, Soup is my ostrich horse. I didn’t steal her, she’s borrowed! Apparently the soup is a recipe they got from some weird witch-healer-cat-lady on a hill around here.  

Iroh decided that, somehow, context didn’t actually help.

Anyways, I’m fine. You can tell Jee (what’s his rank now by the way) and the rest that. Chol said they might be worried about me. I’m not sure why they would, but she seems to know more people skills then I do. She’s kinda like Azula, just without all the murder-y-ness and fire.
Okay, before I forget! The reason I’m actually writing you is to say that technically I’m now an earth kingdom citizen.

Iroh decided that his normal calming tea wasn’t gonna cut it right now. He’d need Seaman Hizu to go fetch the good stuff. Now.

I’m not really sure what the implications for the chain of command on the Belly O’Tea are and Chol couldn’t help with that either. She also said she was sorry, she assumed I didn’t have any relatives left when she adopted me, but apparently it was to get me out of forced conscription by the earth army. Kind of fucked disheartening to see that they seem to pressure even teenagers into service now. Are we responsible for this?

Iroh froze.

Leaving aside the guilt that those last sentences invoked (not a thing he did lightly, but his poor nephew’s moral crisis really came at an inopportune time), he swallowed drily as his eyes kept drifting back to that one word: ‘Adopted’. He could feel the beads of sweat forming.

So yeah, I don’t really know what to do now. I wont be conscripted (for now) since Chol claimed me as some sort of Head of House (pretty sure we went over that once with the royal tutor, but I think Azula was setting throwing sparks at my notepapers and I was distracted… something with only male family members being allowed to lead a household?), anyways, it’s probably for the best if you won’t come over. I hear if they catch firebenders around here, they crush their hands between rocks. So yeah, stay safe don’t worry about me.

Oh, Iroh was worrying all right.

So, what I want to say is: I’m gonna stay here in the Earth Kingdom for a bit, since I’m pretty sure it would be bad for Jee’s heart if I, as an earth kingdom citizen, suddenly were to board a fire nation military vessel as ranking officer.

Iroh was torn. Sure, what his dear nephew had combined was actually very accurate. If it were correct. Oh, how he wanted to throttle the royal tutor responsible for leaving his poor naïve Zuko with such a glaring gap in knowledge of Fire Nation Law. After all, if this truly was a legal adoption, then their Royal family had just gained, what had Zuko said, nine – ten – additional members!

He needed to inform Commander Jee of this.

Love, Cr- Princ- your nephew Zuko Son of Oz-
(Chol says this is how normal people would end their letters. This is weird, not adding the titles. But I guess I’m not a prince any longer so this is fine?)

Actually, Iroh was going to frame this letter. Maybe having this Lady Chol in the family wasn’t that bad. She seemed to succeed in helping Zuko heal from what his father had done to him a lot quicker than Iroh ever had been able. (And he wasn’t going to cloud his slight jealousy cloud his joy at his nephew’s progress. Even if it did sting.)

After all, as long as this Chol wasn’t older than Ozai, nothing too bad should happen. Right?

Iroh decided he might not even need the good stuff Seaman Hizu helpfully was brewing a pot of anymore.

PS: Did you know Azula can see the future? I think you should let the Fire Sages know (if they don’t already…).

On second thought, one cup wasn’t that bad of an idea.

After that, he’d need Commander-But-Actually-Acting-Captain-On-A-Technicality Jee to plot the safest and stealthiest route to the vicinity of wherever his wayward nephew had found himself at.

 

PPS: If you do come (but you really shouldn’t), I’m at Royone Village

Notes:

me: *squints at my own notes on how my younger self envisioned these adoption laws to make sense*

me: *gives up*

I have barely any idea what past Boli wanted to say with this. So, in the spirit of all my writing, i'll just make it up as i go and HOPE i won't open too many plotholes.

Chapter 3: Is It Gay To Be Married To Your New Son's Mother Because of Some Obscure Old Laws From Hundreds Of Years Ago? Asking For A Friend.

Notes:

1. i am unreasonably proud that this chap is exactly 1000 words

2. i wrote this half asleep. dont expect the law part to make sense. i blame zuko's concussion.

“By the way,” Zuko asked between bites of his fried lizard-chicken legs, “how old are you?”

Chol raised an eyebrow.

“You can’t just ask a lady that!”, Heti proclaimed with all the might of a hyper-active six-year old.

The siblings, Yori and Kameyo nodded in agreement, while Hwan brandished his wooden spoon like a dao.

“You’re wrong!” The tiny earthbender crowed back. “Mum’s not a lady! She’s a peasant!”

Chol sighed and wiped away some rice sticking to the boy’s cheeks. “That doesn’t mean I can’t be a lady, right Zuko?” She shot the flushing teen a glance.

“Of course you are!” He sputtered, “You adopted me after all!”

With a laugh the broad woman reached over and tussled the shaggy hair of their resident not-at-all-a-fugitive-fire-nation-noble. “Of course I am. And I turned fifty last autumn, don’t you remember that Hwan? You made me a cake after all.”

Hwan’s eyes lit up. “Yes! I remember! It was the biggest cake in the entire world!”

And entirely made from mud. But Chol graciously left out that detail. No need to slight her son’s heroic tale.

“Huh, neat.” Zuko mumbled contemplatively. “You’re exactly between my father and my uncle’s ages.”

Then he frowned, the motion tugging at the edges of that horrible scar. (Chol hadn’t asked, and had told the other kids not to either, but one did wonder. Dragon-gold eyes and a face almost melted away. People talked after all, especially around ‘foolish women’. But one did have to wonder….) Alas, Chol hadn’t survived this long without a husband to ‘take care of her’ by asking questions where they obviously weren’t needed (admittedly, having her two eldest occupy mildly influential positions also did wonders, but hey, after all she had been the one to teach them bending).

Meanwhile, Zuko was staring at her like he was faced with the world’s most complex word riddle.

“You’re fifty.”

“Yes,” She smiled.

He blinked.

“….You’re older than Fi-, my father.”

“Yes?” Now she was confused; her newest son looked disproportionately distressed at that revelation. Rude much?

Zuko’s eyes widened. Then he let out a load of expletives that made her want to wash his mouth with soap and a scrubber. Oma and Shu, just who had taught the boy such swears? If Chol ever got her hands on that person, they were in for a thorough talking to (her fist).

Miles upon miles away, the crew of the Belly O’Tea all simultaneously felt a cold shiver run down their spines.

Something had set it’s eyes on them and it was not happy.

And back in an idyllic and unsuspecting earth kingdom village named Royone, Ex-(Crown) Prince Zuko, Son of Ursa, Ozai and Chol stared wide-eyed at the new Fire Lord. A Fire Lord, who didn’t at all suspect that her goodwill was about to start some serious problems for quite a lot of people.

Said Fire Lord also decided to do the dishes after realizing that whatever kind of catatonic stupor Zuko had landed in probably was going to pass after a while and she may just as well be productive in the meantime. So she left the boy to his existential crisis, blissfully unaware of the fact that she was the cause of this.

(If she had been born a mind-reader, not that such people existed, but still, she’d seen Zuko thinking very hard back to his History and Imperial Law classes, trying his hardest to piece back together the minutiae of Fire Nation Adoption Laws. And she’s have seen that what he remembered, made him think of quite a few more incredibly graphic expletives.

Because Zuko, blessed be his aversion to anything politics-related, was trying very hard to figure out if him being adopted by her left any little loophole to interpret her as his the Firelord’s wife. But no, he was a Prince of Blood, banished or not, so her becoming his mother made her his biological mother’s wife, since Ozai technically, legally, wasn’t his father anymore since he had renounced him. Hm, bad thoughts area, skip over that quickly. So Chol couldn’t be Ozai’s wife since legally she was his mother, and because his real mother hadn’t been confirmed dead, she still legally was Fire Lady, a title that had only one single prerequisite: ‘Being the acting Fire Lord’s wife’ and there could only ever be one at a time. So for Chol to be his mother, which, since Zuko had given his binding agreement to, she now was by Fire Nation Law, she could only be married to his one legally remaining parent, who coincidentally was the Fire Lady, thus making Chol Fire Lord not only by sheer virtue of being ‘the Fire Lady’s spouse’, but also because Zuko still was of royal blood and the parent that had married into the Royal Family was still alive (Agni, he hoped that that wasn’t only technically), so the other party had to be of royal blood, since anything else implied that there were two siblings marrying each other, which was strictly forbidden since Fire Lord Nahua’s times. So because a little boy had bent some cobblestones in the wrong place at the wrong time, Zuko’s biological-but-not-legal-father had now an older sister, his mother had a wife, the Fire Nation had a new Fire Lord and he himself had a migraine.)

(If Chol truly had been a mind-reader, she’d already have had seven strokes by the time Zuko came to this conclusion. So it probably was good that she was just a very normal earthbender that just happened to accidentally have become Fire Lord.)

(And if Zuko didn’t have to fight very hard against projecting into the Spirit Realm by power of sheer anger and spite, and grabbing the absolute moron of a human being who’d set up these laws like that and dragging them back into the living world to fix it, he’d also have realized that this new Fire Lord came with nine whole additional children under her name.)

 

 

Notes:

again.
if theres plot holes, not my fault.
blame zukos concussion.

Chapter 4: The Fire Sages Are Gonna Have An Absolute BLAST With This one

Notes:

tralala the madness continues, Someone's gotta tell the new Fire Lord of her luck after all

Iroh smiled benevolently. Although he may have been gripping the cup of, admittedly quite lovely, herbal tea (well, technically, herbal infusion) hard enough to shatter it were it made of more fragile material.

“And where did you say my nephew was?” The Dragon of the West wasn’t actively trying to bare his fangs towards the earth kingdom woman sitting vis-à-vis from him, but a little bit of fire may have made its way past his teeth.

Not that this ‘Chol’ did show any reaction to it.

Stoic as they came, this woman was as true earth as Iroh had ever seen. Earth bender, he suspected, a pretty good one even, judging how she had awaited them readily when he and the little troop of soldiers from the Belly had first encroached upon her little farm.

She sighed. “I fear I do not know.” She shook her head with exasperation. “He left yesterday morning saying something about having made a mistake and needing to look some things up. He’s been doing such excursions before, so he should come back soon though?”

Ah yes, Iroh was quite aware of his dear nephews penchant for sudden disappearances, although in his presence he at least had had the decency to (mostly) keep it to the night. Obviously this woman was being too lax with him. Is what the jealous little voice in Iroh’s mind wanted him to think. Honestly, if his Zuko felt comfortable enough to act like this in the open and even inform this woman of his plan…

Iroh felt both happy and sad at the same time.

“Right, I almost forgot,” Chol set down her empty cup with a frown. “When he left, he said If someone from the Fire Nation was bothering us, I was to cite something called ‘Tese’s Law’ and that that would prohibit them to touch me or my family…”

Iroh froze.

“He disappeared before I could ask what this Law is. Really,” and she sounded frustrated ,” he’s a sweet boy but he has this problem with leaving out context…”

Oh yes, Iroh was quite aware of that trait.

But more importantly, if Zuko had claimed Fire Lord Tese’s law applied here…

Despite the tea he had been drinking, his mouth went dry.

“Oh Great Agni, have merci with us,” he whispered, staring at the woman in front of him.

“Oh fuck me sidewards with a crowbar,” Navy-Man-of-Debatable-Rank Jee, who was standing behind Iroh said at the same time.

“Language!”, Chol snapped.

And Let’s-Just-Call-Him-Captain Jee immediately shut up. Because if their little shouty royal menace had called upon Tese’s here, there was at least an 80% chance of him being yelled at by a Firelord of some sort of legitimacy, so…

When in doubt, stand to attention and shut your mouth.

A pair of intense, dark green eyes narrowed at him. “Someone explain. Now.”

Iroh let out a deep. Deep sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Fire Lord Tese’s Law. It actually encompasses several stipulations about the rights and duties of the Fire Nation Royal Family, but the part I think my dear nephew was getting at specifically is ‘Any member of the Fire Nation Royal Family can immediately and effectively take over command of any military unit under Fire Nation Flag, any resistance to such will be seen as High Treason and demands Capital Punishment under Imperial Law’.”

The woman (and suspected Fire Lord) looked at him blankly.

“Let me speak plainly here, my Lady.” Iroh stood up to his full, slightly portly frame. “You are intelligent. Clearly my nephew has told you his real name, otherwise we wouldn’t have this situation now, and fire nation military presence is heavy enough here that you can be expected to know-“

“Wait, wait, wait,” Chol’s hands snapped up as the woman interrupted.

“Wait.” She took a breath. “You are telling me that Zuko, the same Zuko who was writing a formal petition to me in favour of the rights of the lizard-chickens to raise a certain percentage of their eggs to adulthood? That Zuko is a part of the royal family of the Fire Nation?” She stared at Iroh and Jee like she was waiting for the punch line.

Iroh’s eyebrows shot up as well now. “You didn’t know?”

“I just assumed he was some noble’s son! Firebender yes, maybe even Fire Nation, but a Royal?!”

Iroh didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I’m sorry to inform you, but yes; Zuko, Prince Zuko, is most definitely part of the Royal family, no matter what his father wishes. More importantly, as are you.”

“WHAT?!”

“Believe me, I’d much rather have you far away from the, pardon my words, clusterfuck that is our family, but you did adopt Zuko and as such count as his mother, which, through some additional external circumstances, makes you my sister. As well as sister to the Fire Lord. Or Ex-Fire Lord, if you are indeed as old as I suspect you are.” Not that Iroh didn’t like the notion of having a sister, he always lamented that their family lacked a female touch (other than Azula), but he’d have indeed preferred it to not be quite so accidental.

“Okay, this has been- Wait. Your sister? And what does my age have to do with this??”

Ah, so Zuko had thought of that specific little problem as well, credit to him. Alas, it had come too late.

“Order of heir follows chronological birth order, unless explicitly stated otherwise by the Head of the Clan or the right of succession is given up by the heir voluntarily.”

Chol had to close her eyes for a moment, and when she looked back at Iroh, silent resignation had settled on her face.

“So, what… I’m  a Royal Fire Lady now or something? Do i have to start wearing fancy capes and little gold crowns now?”

Iroh met her gaze just as steadily (and just as resigned).

“More than that. You are the rightful Fire Lord. You'll have to claim your throne.”

Jee What-Did-His-Rank-Even-Matter-In-This-Situation nodded, because he could at least be helpful if they were starting a civil war right now.

Notes:

well well well, where could our dear wayward prince have gone to
i do wonder~

Chapter 5: The Tale Of The Frog Princess Was A Lie

Notes:

*dangles new chapter on a rope like a a piece of meat over shark-infested waters*

Cémmënté?

There was a frog on Zuko’s head.

There was a frog on Zuko’s head and he briefly contemplated throwing it off. But that would mean with almost a hundred percent certainty that he’d be spotted.

So the frog stayed. As did Zuko.

He’d been here trying to figure out the guard rotations for half a day now. His footwork, which decidedly was not made for swampy situations, had been soaked hours ago. As were basically the entirety of his clothes. Just what was it with swamps and their all-encompassing wetness? Even the air was wet. And Zuko knew for a fact that air wasn’t supposed to be wet!

Now he hadn’t been a fan of Azula’s frankly terrifying terraforming projects she’d presented their geography teacher at age 10 (it had involved a lot of burning and not much asking-for-permission). But this experience made him earnestly reconsider.

(Maybe – just maybe – he could redirect Azula’s…. Azula-ness in a useful direction. He’d just have to convince her that swamps were the enemies of the Fire Nation. And not to try to fry him on sight. As well as the Fire Sages to let her go if Uncle had told them about her prophetic abilities yet. Hm, all in all, this plan relied on too many variables.

Apparently the swamp stayed safe. For now.

The frog on his head moved. Zuko resisted the urge to scowl.

 

….

 

Bowman (“Actually, Bowwoman.” “Yeah, but that just sounds stupid.”) Usagi plopped down next to her teammate, who was balancing himself, his bow and arrows, a stash of illicit magazines and two bowls of hot, steaming noodlesoup on the narrow stone outcropping on the very edge of the stronghold.

<And?> She signed, curiously peering into the forest. <Any changes?>

Kumo, also known as ‘her teammate’, demonstratively held out one of the bowls of soup he’d been holding and stared at her rudely. Usagi rolled her eyes. That man was so easily annoyed, even by the slightest things. To be fair, the weather had been even wetter than usual, which did not have a great effect on anyone’s morale. So she took her portion and switched to one-hand-sign.

<Better now?>

The other Yuyan flared his nostrils for a moment, but then made a vague sign with his free hand. It was so sloppy that Usagi, for the briefest moment, had to wonder what Komodo-rhino eggs meant in this context.

<Don’t let the Captain see you sign like this.> She shot him a critical look, then focussed back on her noodles and the ‘view’. <So they’re still there?>

Kumo ever so slightly nodded into the general direction of where they had discovered their tiny wet stalker. Yep, there they were, still at the same spot they’d discovered them two hours ago. Honestly, Usagi found the tenacity of the kid (she assumed it was a kid; the other option was a concerningly scrawny adult) deeply admirable. They had remained almost unmoving for the entirety of the time they had known the kid had been there, and probably even longer. The only reason they had spotted the kid in the first place had been that frozen frog on their head, which must have sat on them to warm itself and thus had lost it’s usual coloring. (Frozen frogs were a dead giveaway for hiding prey, since they actively seek out warmer places during breeding time. And a human or animal trying to hide in the swamp were their preferred sources of warmth. One of the reasons the Yuyan stayed in the trees were those pesky frogs after all.)

Well, there already were bets going on about how long that youngster would keep it up. Thus Usagi resumed kid-watching; there wasn’t much else interesting going on ‘round here anyways. And she still hadn’t decided in which pool she’d be tossing her money.

Slurping up the noodles did earn her another dirty look from Kumo though. Honestly, that guy was too prickly for his own good.

 

…

 

Zuko had decided to team up with the frog. Or, well, the frog had decided that it wasn’t going to leave Zuko’s head, even while the teen was scaling the outer wall of the second-most secure structure on their continent. So this meant they were a team now.

What exactly the frog brought to the table in this joined venture was just as much a mystery as why it had decided that Zuko’s head was it’s ideal habitat, but at this point the ex-prince was above questioning such trivial matters.

His target was much more important.

Because he knew that every ranking officer of the Fire Nation Army was required to have a bound issue of the most up-to-date compilation of Imperial Law if not with them at all times, then in their quarters. And he really needed to borrow one.

Because if he’d actually switched their head of states by getting adopted, he’d like to at least know the exact legal position they all were in.

He owed Chol that much. And his siblings.

Now he’d just have to find out where exactly he’d find the quarters of one of the officers. Preferably a high ranking one, since those were almost guaranteed to not actually carry the book with them (back when he’d been on the Belly… he had done exactly that and it had earned him some weird gazes from the crew. But that had been a… different situation).

Alternating between slinking into the deep shadows of the old fort and keeping to the stupidly extensive rafters, he effortlessly (almost too effortlessly, why were the Yuyan so sloppy? Weren’t they supposed to be some kind of elite?) stood undetected throughout his whole venture of systematically searching the entirety of Pohuai stronghold.

Stupid layout of the place wasn’t Fire Nation standard.

Should he just call it a day, go back to Royone Village and maybe sneakily ask Chol about the typical locations of officer’s quarters in Earth Kingdom military buildings?

Or was that too obvious a question to ask?

And would a peasant lady even know such a thing?

Zuko was too lost in his own thoughts, staring down on yet another sparsely lit corridor. So he reacted way too late when two large shadows dropped down behind him.

Notes:

originally i planned to have zuko sneak in undetected, but then that frog appeared out of nowhere and this happened instead.
welp

Chapter 6: The Stronghold's Haunted

Notes:

*clasps hands*

This chapter is sponsored by my subconscious being inspired by me making tea i guess.
Do the chapters get progressively shorter? yes. But hey, cake is cake.

also merry christmas to those who celebrate.

You know your life hits a new low when you, your co-worker and your superior officer all have to observe the teenager that had broken into (??) your heavily protected (!!!) stronghold suffer the consequences of a you-inflicted concussion and talk to the frozen frog that, for better or for worse, had decided that said teen’s messy mop of hair was it’s ideal habitat.

Which was exactly the situation Bowman Usagi saw herself confronted with this very moment.

What made it even worse, was that Colonel Shinu had taken one glance at the boy, cursed, turned around and stared at the wall for a solid minute while muttering something in a dialect that Usagi only half understood and thus could either have been something about committing high treason or the base cook’s frilly underwear. Neither of which were sounding particularly thrilling to Usagi’s trained ears.

Thus, she decided that this was above her paygrade and stopped worrying about it.

This turned out to be a grave miscalculation on her part, as roughly fifteen minutes later she and Kumo found themselves “escorting” the boy to the base doctor with the strict orders to hide the boy from everyone by all means.

An easy job for a Yuyan, right?

Wrong.

Turns out concussions do extremely weird things to swamp-boys (listen, they had to give him some moniker while trying to wrangle him). So, either swamp boy was having the wildest hallucinations, or he actually had been concussed into a spiritual awakening and was merrily conversing with the bases’ Spirits.

Whichever it was, Dr. Ito was gonna have a field day with this one.

“No, Miss Wall, if you pour boiling water on that one, you’re going to burn the flavor! Niza leaves are best steeped in cold water, otherwise the floral notes get lost,” whisper-yelled swamp-boy at that moment, as if to prove Usagi’s point.

He’d been talking to the stronghold walls for several minutes now, apparently exchanging tea recipies.

Usagi’s eyes twitched.

If this was how they got confirmation that Pohuai Stronghold was indeed haunted, she was going to quit.

In her quiet desperation, she signed to Kumo to start dragging the boy faster.

…

The wall lady was nice enough, Zuko supposed.

Even if she had incredibly wrong opinions about tea and infusions.

Then again, could a wall even drink tea? And if yes, would she taste something?

Manyfold laughter filled his head. We cannot taste like mortals do, young Prince, but we can appreciate the thought and skill that was put into an offering. We prefer fire-touched water.

Zuko scowled.

“Stop talking to me. My sister is the one with weird future-prediction powers, go bother her.” And wouldn’t that be a sight. Azula befriending spirits. That could go either very well or very poorly, depending on how flammable spirits were.

The laughing returned to his head.

He scowled even harder.

…

Frankly, Usagi was impressed. Never before had she seen someone pull off a full-body scowl, yet somehow the swamp-boy was doing it. At the wall. While being dragged.

It was fascinating.

Sadly, this was exactly the moment where their squadmates Inu and Yoko appeared from behind a corner in front of them.

Inu immediately raised his hand in greeting but then froze as his eyes fell on the slightly wiggling teen that was being by them and who had moved on from discussing teas with the wall to asking it random things about spirit-offerings that made Usagi’s neck hair rise up.

<What,> The younger Yuyan signed while staring at the two of them, <do you have there?!>

Usagi immediately yanked swamp-boy behind her. Not that it did anything to hide him.

<A frog.> Kumo answered, his face betraying nothing.

“The walls have horrible taste in tea,” the boy muttered.

Notes:

Usagi: The Walls are haunted.
The rest of the Yuyan: w h a t
Usagi *cocks gun*: You heard me. The walls are haunted

 

also, yes, the end is just the "What do you have there" "a smoothie" meme because i am funny like that

Notes:

*generic youtuber voice*
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