LAST EDITED ON Apr-25-14 AT 01:02 PM (EDT)
 
Thursday, September 13, 2390
00:31 hrs Asgard Standard Time
Asgard

After the day she'd just had, it almost seemed surreal for Azula to be back aboard the Phoenix Queen. She knew from the empirical evidence available that she'd been gone less than a week, but as she'd come up the ramp into the familiar, handsomely appointed space of the atrium, it felt like she hadn't seen it in years - maybe decades. Some lingering echo of the failed psychic reprogramming she'd experienced at the hands of her estranged, demonic, and now twice-deceased father, perhaps, still skewing her perceptions of time and distance a little.

She put this theory to the Phoenix Queen's prototype Auto-Doc as she emerged from its treatment enclosure.

"Well, that's really outside my field," Auto-Doc admitted in his calm, unhurried synthetic drawl, "but your psychometric readings are a little disordered. Nothin' too extreme, though, and if I had to guess I'd say it should settle down with a good night's sleep."

"Hmm," said Azula thoughtfully. "I hope so. It's not debilitating, but it does feel a bit strange."

"Other than that, you're fine," Auto-Doc continued. "All your implants are in good shape and working normally, your radiation level is nominal, and your cellular regeneration rate is A-OK. You're a perfectly normal, healthy fifteen-year-old girl... if normal fifteen-year-old girls were naturally pyrokinetic and crammed full of bleeding-edge military-spec cybernetic enhancements, anyway," the medical robot added offhandedly.

Azula glanced at Auto-Doc's side-mounted diagnostic terminal, eyebrow arched. "It's not a cosmetic modification?"

"No ma'am," Auto-Doc replied. "DNA methylation doesn't lie. Damned if I know how, I never seen anything like it, but somebody rolled back your odometer for real. Hell of a thing."

Azula frowned thoughtfully. "Hmm," she repeated. "How will that affect my PHOENIX module?"

"Doesn't appear that it has, but we'll have to monitor it," said Auto-Doc. "Unsurprisingly, there's nothin' in the literature about any PHOENIX patient who suddenly reverted to mid-adolescence before," he added dryly. "You could be a case study, if there was any way anybody would believe it happened in the first place."

"What a shame there isn't, then," Azula replied, equally dryly. Then, with thanks for the checkup, she left the Phoenix Queen's sickbay and went to her quarters.

Once there, she regarded herself in the mirror by her wardrobe for a moment. She was... not vain, exactly, but she liked the way she looked and was not above pausing now and then to admire herself in reflective surfaces. She knew she had a pleasing face, a poised and elegant manner, and a slim, athletic figure; they were part of her toolset, and though less relied upon nowadays than they had been in her youth, she took pains to maintain them anyway, because that was what she was trained to do with useful tools.

This task had never been all that challenging, and since Mojave, where she'd acquired a very handy bit of 21st-century black technology, it had ceased to require any particular effort at all. Nowadays, approaching (as near as she could calculate it) the biological age of seventy, she remained satisfied with what she saw in mirrors. It would've been nice if she'd managed to stumble across the PHOENIX modification sometime before the age of sixty, but she was well aware that there were much worse draws from the life-extension deck than perpetual, well-maintained early middle age.

The face she saw now, blinking bemusedly back at her from the mirror, was much younger - herself as she had been when she'd held half of her old, lost homeworld in the palm of her hand and anticipated the day when the rest of it would lie at her feet. That version of her face wasn't as unexpected now as it had been two days ago, but it looked sharply out of place in these surroundings, like a brand-new radio mounted in the dash of an antique car.

Azula smiled ironically at herself and started hunting for something to wear besides this slightly preposterous old Fire Nation armor.

---

She ended up going with her old adventuring clothes from Mojave, because they were comfortable and familiar, and because they were so threadbare and many-patched that it didn't really matter they didn't quite fit properly any more. She padded out the boots with a couple of extra pairs of socks, stuffed the now-over-long legs of her trousers into them, and that was the job more or less done. She caught herself belting on her sidearm out of sheer force of habit and laughed as she hung it back on its peg by the door. She never really needed it much of anywhere, but she particularly wasn't going to need it here, tonight.

As the Phoenix Queen's ramp hummed smoothly back up behind her, Azula pulled her cloak - the one bit of her Fire Nation ensemble she'd kept - a little tighter around her and took a moment to get her bearings. The ship was parked, along with most of the others that had come from Midgard for the occasion, at the edge of the great plain of Asgard, among the still-smoldering wreckage of the (not-quite-)Last Battle. Even out here, a good half-mile from the walls of the city, she could hear the sounds of the celebrations happening inside drifting across the cold night air. Above, the sky was a riot of color and light, the most spectacular aurora she could remember seeing.

She started off toward the city gate, then drew back with a surprised sound as she nearly ran into a very tall, broad, dark-clad man. In this context, it took her a few seconds to realize that she knew him - it was Admiral MegaZone, the supreme commander of the Wedge Defense Force. Azula had heard that he was present, but hadn't seen him in the wild chaos of the battle, and she was slightly shocked by his appearance, partly because he'd just loomed up out of the chilly darkness without warning, and partly because he looked like he'd just escaped from a lunatic asylum. (Having once done so herself, she was better-positioned than most to know what that looked like.)

Azula knew him in passing, having met him a couple of times during her time as a WDF contractor, but she couldn't claim to know him well. She and the Queen had been under the direct command of Vice Admiral Kirk, commanding Red Squadron, during the Corporate War and its aftermath, and it was he who was her closest contact within the WDF's uppermost reaches. She was familiar enough with him, however, to know that he didn't normally look so haggard or so distracted, his eyes rimmed with dark circles but bright with a weird - and familiar - energy.

"Oh," he said, sounding not so much surprised as pleased. "Captain Inazuma. Nice to see you again. Glad you made it through the mayhem today." He gave her a distractedly thoughtful look. "You seem different. Did you change your hair?"

Azula didn't quite know how to respond to that; in fact she had changed her hair since the last time MegaZone had seen her, but she - or rather her father's court wizards, apparently - had changed rather more than that as well.

MegaZone chuckled at her perplexed look, took an object from one of the pockets of his long leather coat, and pressed it into her hand. "Here," he said. "For the fairest one. 'Scuse me. Stuff to do! Or stuff is doing me. Hard to tell at the moment."

So saying, he bent and gave her a friendly kiss on the cheek, then half-loped, half-staggered off into the night, muttering something about lamions having a half-integer spin, not a full integer, those are bogons.

Azula stood, even more perplexed than before, and watched him disappear into the gloom. Then, once she could no longer see him, she looked at the object he'd given her. It was an apple, plump and fresh-looking, its skin glinting a smooth, polished gold in the glow of the Queen's parking lights. It was far too light to be made of gold, and when she sniffed at it experimentally, it smelled like... well, like an apple, and reminded her suddenly that she was, in fact, ravenously hungry. She couldn't actually remember when she'd last eaten.

Ordinarily, Azula would not have eaten anything handed to her by an obviously crazy person of no better than casual acquaintance, however hungry she might be. Tonight, though... what the hell.

She bit the apple gingerly, ready to abort the operation if its skin proved to be as metallic as it looked; but it parted easily, with a crisp, fresh-picked crunch, and the flesh within was deliciously sweet and struck just the right balance between juicy and firm. It wasn't like biting into an apple so much as biting into the Platonic ideal of apples.

Smiling, Azula made for the city, munching the golden apple as she went.

---

"... so Caesar says, 'Now you take this fucking Platinum Chip and go destroy whatever is in that bunker,'" said Veronica, "and the Cap'n looks at him and says, just as cool as you please," (and here she adopted quite a good impression of Azula's "coolly dismissive" voice) "'Why in the world would I want to do that? Particularly for the likes of you, you foul-mouthed, misogynistic thug.'"

"I bet that didn't go over well!" said Sokka cheerfully, raising his tankard in salute as the Phoenix Queen's crew and the Einherjar of Dìqiú roared with laughter.

"You bet correctly!" Raul Tejada assured him.

"It all kicked off then," Rose of Sharon Cassidy confirmed, nodding. "We had to kill practically every Legionary in the Fort to get out of that one alive."

Boone smiled, as much as Boone ever smiled, which wasn't much. "That was a good day," he said, in all evident contentment.

From behind him, Azula's voice said with dry amusement, "Your satisfaction was naturally my highest priority, Craig."

"And much appreciated it was too," Boone replied mock-solemnly; then he turned to face her, blinked, tipped his aviator shades down his nose to look at her over them, regarded his tankard of mead with a bemused expression, shrugged, and took a long pull on it. All around him, his colleagues and the Einherjar at their table stared in slightly less philosophical astonishment at her.

"Oh. Oh my," said Veronica.

Cass performed an operation similar to Boone's, eyeing her mead with an air of faint reproach. "This is what I get for drinking something other than whiskey," she mumbled.

"My cataracts must be getting worse," said Raul matter-of-factly.

"What's the problem now?" Azula wondered, frowning quizzically, as she slid onto the bench between Ty Lee and Sokka, elbowing the latter casually over a few inches to give herself room. Then, with a thoughtful air, she looked over that end of the table, where sat a collection of her old acquaintances from the glory days in Dìqiú.

"Well, well, look at all of you," she observed, smiling wryly. "All grown up for the afterlife. Agni, Zuzu, you actually managed to be handsome, didn't you? Stayed with the same tragic haircut, though, I see." Without giving her red-faced brother an opportunity to respond, she moved on.

"These boots are killing me," she observed offhandedly, bending to tug off one of the offending articles. "Maybe three pairs of socks was overkill, but I swear it's like they've shrunk on my way over here from the Queen."

"Uh... or you've grown," said Sokka.

Azula looked up from adjusting her footwear to eye him skeptically. "I beg your pardon?"

"He's right," said Ty Lee, nodding. "You're all grown up too." Reddening slightly, she added in a lower voice, "You look amazing."

Azula frowned at her, finished removing her extra socks, put her boots back on, then turned to one of her crew. "Veronica," she said briskly. "My colleague Ty Lee here occasionally says things that are quite ridiculous. Is this one of those occasions?"

"Uh... no, 'fraid not, Cap'n," Veronica replied; then, grinning brightly, she added, "You are all grown up and you do look amazing. Is this because of what I said earlier? You shouldn't have."

"How 'all grown up'?" Azula wondered, eyeing her skeptically.

Veronica tilted her head thoughtfully. "Twenty? Twenty-five, tops, but that's pushing it."

Azula considered that for a moment; then, shrugging, she snagged a tankard of mead from the tray of a passing feasthall steward and dealt with about half of it before even putting it down.

"This has been the oddest week," she remarked casually, and that was, apparently, exactly as far as she planned to explore the matter, because the next thing she said was, "So. I don't see Aang anywhere. Is he avoiding me? Someone might want to reassure him that I hardly ever blow up any more."

Katara, who had been scowling at her as one might an uninvited wedding guest one dares not call out for fear of spoiling the occasion, blinked and looked around. "Where did he get off to?" she wondered.

"Dunno," Sokka replied. "He went to get more chips for the salsa, but there's a lot of shiny objects in this place. You better go find him, Zuko."

"Why do I always have to go find him?" Zuko grumbled, rising.

"Because your honor demands it," all his friends chorused (even, smiling more or less in spite of herself, Katara).

"Oh, right," he said, as if he'd never realized that or been told it before, and then he plunged off into the crowd in search of the Avatar.

"How's your head?" Boone inquired.

"Fine, thanks. How did you know to do that?"

"I didn't," Boone said matter-of-factly. "I intended to take you out. Mercy killing." He shrugged. "Just missed."

Azula snorted. "You never miss. Or admit it when you do," she added. Glancing to her left, she saw that one member of the Einherjar party wasn't strictly in the spirit of the thing. "Oh, do give over, Katara," she said. "Are you genuinely planning to go on nursing your grudge past the originally-prophesied expiration date of the universe? That seems petty. Besides, you're the one who nearly drowned me. It seems to me that if I'm willing to let that go, you have few grounds for continued hostility."

"She's got a point," Toph Beifong remarked offhandedly. She knocked back a pint of mead in a single pull, wiped away foam with the back of one hand, and belched with studied gusto, then went on, "She tried to kill you a bunch of times, you ruined all her dreams and put her in the crazy house. Karmically speaking, I think that's kind of a wash. Plus, ya know, end of the universe. Are there any more of those kabob things left?"

Katara sighed. "You're all idiots," she said.

"But you love us," Sokka remarked.

Ty Lee leaned over and murmured something in Azula's ear. Leaning back to regard her skeptically, Azula said, "Are you sure?" Ty Lee nodded vigorously and murmured something else. "Hmm," said Azula. "I'm skeptical, but... what the hell, it's worth a try."

Then, turning to face the glowering waterbender, she put down her tankard, composed herself into as solemn an attitude as she could manage in this setting, and said, "Katara, what do you want me to say? That I'm sorry for doing what I had been taught was right? For loving my country? For believing in what I was told was my destiny? I was wrong, Katara, but I didn't know that at the time. I genuinely believed, based on my warped understanding of the way the world worked, that I was doing the right thing, every bit as sincerely as you did. I can't apologize for that, not truthfully, not with any integrity.

"What I can apologize for," she went on before Katara could say anything, "is making it personal. I didn't just want to win, I wanted you and those you loved to suffer." She shook her head. "That wasn't right. It was spiteful and childish, and I'm sorry."

There was a brief silence at that particular table. All around them, the celebration carried raucously on, everyone else in the feasting-hall of the victorious gods unaware of the proceedings, but to those at the Dìqiú table, it was momentarily as though nobody else was even in the room. Everyone there watched one or the other of the two women, intently curious as to what would happen next.

Katara regarded Azula for several seconds, her blue eyes hard to read. She knew of old that this young-appearing woman was a consummate liar, so adept at concealing her true intent that she could even fool Toph's almost extrasensory people-reading skills. She wanted to believe what she was being told - to believe that her most despised enemy of the elder days was really sitting there apologizing, if not for her actions, at least for her needless cruelty. But knowing what she did of Azula's mercurial temper and manipulative guile, she couldn't. Not quite.

Azula read that in her face and sighed. "What else do you want from me?" she wondered. "Shall I fall on my sword in shame? Would that satisfy you? I don't need your approval, Katara. I offer you peace in the spirit of this red day we've just survived. If it suits you to throw it in my face in payment for my crimes of old, then so be it." She rose from the table. "Just ask yourself as you nurse your old hatred - which of us is being spiteful now?"

So saying, she turned on her heel and left the feasthall.

"That went well," Mai observed from somewhere near the bottom of her current tankard.

A moment later Zuko reappeared from the other direction. "Everyone can relax, I found Aang - hey, where's Azula?"

"Katara ran her off," Toph remarked.

"Just like old times," said Sokka, nudging his sister with an elbow. "Right?"

"You guys are mean," Ty Lee said disconsolately; then she got up and went off in pursuit.

---

One of the interesting things about Odin's palace was that it had a remarkable profusion of balconies - enough so virtually everyone present for the post-Ragnarök feast could've had one to him- or herself if the impulse had struck them all at once. Since it generally hadn't, Azula had little trouble finding an unoccupied one from which to do a little gloomy reflecting.

From somewhere down below came faint engine sounds, and occasional drunken shouts of spectators, as some kind of race was evidently in progress in the courtyard. Azula tuned the noise out and regarded the spectacular aurora and the unfamiliar stars of Asgard, wondering what she would do next. Suddenly the whole business seemed horribly anticlimactic.

She heard the sliding door open and close again behind her, and a soft tread on the stone paving of the balcony. Assuming it was someone from the party come to try and cajole her back to the table, she turned to tell whoever it was that he was wasting his time, then drew back with a surprised sound as she saw that her surmise had been wrong.

"Hello, Azula," said Ursa quietly.

"Mother!" Azula gasped, her breath making a little cloud in the frosty Asgard air.

"Do you really believe it's me this time?" Ursa wondered with a gentle smile.

Recovering some of her accustomed aplomb, Azula gave a sardonic half-smile and said, "Well, there are no mirrors out here, so I suppose you must be." Then she turned back to regarding the velvety night again as Ursa stepped to the railing beside her.

"Tell me something, Mother," said Azula after a silent minute or so. "How many of our conversations over the past few decades have been real?"

"Oh... most of them, I should think," said Ursa. "Since you were freed from the ice, at any rate."

"Hm," said Azula, and then, thoughtfully, "I always assumed you were some sort of manifestation of my unconscious mind."

"Before you left Dìqiú, that was most likely what was happening," Ursa conceded, "but afterward... no. No, those conversations were quite real. I was astonished to learn that you were still alive, and I had to pull quite a few strings to be allowed to contact you, even in such a vague and tenuous fashion... but I'm so glad I did." Smiling, she touched Azula's arm. "I got to watch you grow into the person you were always meant to be after all. Something I despaired of ever seeing after you disappeared."

Azula turned and regarded her. "You never gave up on me," she said, not certain whether it was a statement or a question.

"Neither did your brother," said Ursa. "He wondered what had happened to you all his life. On his deathbed he asked Aang's successor to find you... but she was never able to. Once she discovered that you had left Dìqiú, she was stymied, with no way of finding out where in the vast cosmos beyond you had gone, and you've never been back." She smiled, a little wryly, and said, "Zuko was a bit chagrined to arrive here and discover that he'd set the poor woman a fool's errand."

"I was never sure the world I remembered from my childhood was real," Azula admitted. "I mean... of late I've been fairly certain, but I could never find real proof, let alone a path that would lead me there."

"That time would have come soon, even without your father's interference," Ursa told her.

Azula chuckled darkly and turned her attention back to the aurora. "It's so typical of Father that the only times he ever did anyone a favor, it was accidentally, in the course of trying to destroy something."

"Yes," Ursa agreed quietly. "Yes it is."

They stood side by side for a few moments, silently contemplating the gaily coruscating Asgardian sky.

"This has been the oddest week," Azula repeated, and the two women laughed together.

"That it has," Ursa agreed. "That it has."

The door opened again behind them; they turned to see Ty Lee standing there, looking slightly surprised that she hadn't found Azula alone.

"Oh!" she said. "I'm sorry, I thought... I'll go," she said but Ursa smiled and shook her head.

"Not at all. I was about to turn in for the night anyway. It's been a long day, and despite the occasion, I'm not really in a party mood," she said. "You young people go and have a good time." She put a hand on Azula's shoulder. "I'll see you again before you leave. But before I go, I just want to make it perfectly clear how proud I am of you, Azula. You did a great thing today."

"I had a lot of help," said Azula wryly.

"That's one of the things I'm proudest of," Ursa replied, and then - slightly to Azula's shock, then entirely to her contentment - she hugged her daughter before parting from her quietly and disappearing into the interior of the palace.

When she had gone, Azula and Ty Lee stood regarding each other in silence for a moment. Then Azula gave her ironic smile again and said,

"One almost hates to say it, but being dead seems to be agreeing with you."

Ty Lee laughed. "It's not so bad when you put it that way," she admitted. "Please come back to the party? I know Katara's being difficult, but the others would really like to see you."

"And what about you?" Azula wondered, crossing the balcony with a measured, deliberate tread. "When last we saw each other, as I recall, it wasn't to part on particularly good terms."

"You couldn't help that," Ty Lee said. "You weren't well."

"No, I suppose I wasn't," Azula agreed, "but you know... I've never been entirely comfortable with using that fact to excuse myself. It's an easy way out. At the very least, I owe you - and Mai, come to that - the same apology I offered Katara. Even though I believed that what I was doing was right, I went about it the wrong way. I treated you very shabbily indeed. It could even be argued that you have greater cause to resent me than Katara ever did. After all, you two were trying to be my friends, and I repaid you by treating you little better than my enemies, even before the end." She stopped in front of her old friend and sighed, bowing her head. "You deserved better, Ty Lee. I'm sorry."

Ty Lee stared at her in stunned disbelief for a moment; then, a faint note of wonder in her voice, she said, "You've been thinking about this for a long time, haven't you?"

"By the time I regained some semblance of sense," Azula replied, not looking up, "you were probably long dead. For decades, I wasn't even sure you had ever existed in the first place. Either way, I didn't think I would ever have the chance to say what I just said." She raised her head then, looking her old friend in the face, and Ty Lee was shocked anew to see a tear tracking one of her cheeks. "So yes. You could say I've spent a fair time reflecting on it."

Ty Lee gazed silently at her for a few seconds, her grey eyes tinted a shifting green by the aurora. Azula assumed her long-lost friend was searching for words, or possibly preparing to punch her, which she was willing to accept - once - as her due after all this time.

What she did instead was somewhat more surprising, and almost as aggressive, but considerably less percussive.

---

When Azula (disheveled and contented) sloped back into the feasthall a while later, the party was still roaring on despite the lateness of the hour, and showed no signs of slowing down. Most of the tables were either vacant or occupied by scattered little groups now, as most of the dining appeared to be done with. Now there were more little islands of activity sprinkled around the room, as other kinds of recreation had broken out - arm wrestling, wrestling wrestling, various kinds of music and dancing, even a few boxing matches and several outright fights, all coexisted noisily and chaotically under the hall's high, vaulted roof.

Azula took a couple of seconds in the doorway to assess the new situation, then made straight for one of the smaller sub-groups. Her crew appeared to have dispersed - she caught a glimpse of Cass down at the end of one of the long tables, doing shots with a tall man in the uniform of an Asgardian Air Force colonel, and silently wished her luck - but the group from Dìqiú was still mostly together, talking and laughing. She was momentarily taken aback to see how tall Aang was as an adult - her mental image of him had still been both twelve and short for his age - but she put the thought aside for the moment. She had a different mission in mind.

Without breaking stride, she snagged a couple of narrow, stemmed glasses of something yellow and fizzy from a table in one hand as she passed, then sauntered up to the group and joined them. Katara noticed her first, looked as if she might say something, then frowned and looked away without doing so. Sokka took a moment longer, and only twigged to her presence when those opposite him in their little circle - Zuko and Aang - spotted her.

The Avatar, his startlingly long and bony grown-up face breaking into a smile, opened his mouth as if to address her, but Azula held up her free hand - one moment please - and turned to Sokka, who was giving her a slightly unfocused, befuddled look.

"Sokka, darling," she said casually, "would you be so kind as to ask your sister if she'll please have a drink with me and let the past lie where it fell?"

Sokka looked even more confused by this; Katara was, after all, standing right there, and could not possibly have failed to hear her, even in this noisy room. Then, with a whatever-you-say sort of shrug, he turned to convey the message to his sister, but before he could do so, she had replied - also addressing her remarks to him.

"Sokka," Katara said coolly, "please inform Princess Azula that it is not my policy to drink with tyrannical bitches such as herself."

Sokka blinked - he was a bit drunk, but not drunk enough to think saying that was a good idea - and replied, "Uh, that might not - "

"Tell her, Sokka," Katara snapped, her eyes glinting; then she shot a similarly flinty look at Aang and Zuko, driving them back a step and forestalling any attempt either might've made to intervene.

Azula, to both Katara's and Sokka's surprise, emitted a merry laugh at this, one entirely devoid of the dangerous edge it might've been expected to carry under the circumstances.

"She might consider who's talking," she said lightly, putting her free hand companionably on Sokka's shoulder. Then, leaning toward him with a conspiratorial air, she added, "After all, she should know full well by now that all bitches would be tyrants if they could."

Toph Beifong, who had stood gazing blankly off into a corner of the room and listening to the byplay, let out a peal of laughter at that which drew startled looks from various points around them, even through the cacophony of the celebration.

"Fire princess 2, ice princess 1," she remarked with a broad grin, then elbowed Katara hard enough to jostle her a half-step toward Azula (who had uncrossed the stems of her two glasses and now stood holding one in each hand with a wry little smile). Katara (pointlessly) shot Toph a glare, then turned and stared at Azula in disbelief for a second; then, almost unwillingly, she cracked a little smile, then a bigger one, and then laughed and took one of the glasses.

"Well," she said philosophically, "as one tyrannical bitch to another, I suppose I'll drink to that," and they tapped their glasses together and drained them.

"Tyrants If They Could" - a Twilight Mini-Story by Benjamin D. Hutchins
special to the Eyrie Productions Discussion Forum
© 2014 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

*scratches head*

Okay, I think I see the problem here, and its actually personal, in and of I'm not as familiar with the events of AtlA as most of us are. Of course, in your usual, unflappable style, thats okay, as I'm easily able to get the gist of the tension between this Katara and Azula, just not quite some of the specifics.

In specific, the specifics that prompt the punchline about Bitches and Tyrants. Can anyone point me at something to educate myself better?

Do like that you've decided that past Avatars can qualify for Vallhalla just as much as anyone else, for some reason I was thinking that they kinda mostly had to hang in the spirit world of Diqu in case the current avatar needs a consult, etc. Now it sounds almost more like they could hang there if they so desired, but a lot of them dont and just hurry back and meet the avatar there if so needed.

>In specific, the specifics that prompt the punchline about Bitches and
>Tyrants. Can anyone point me at something to educate myself better?

Azula's making a play on a couplet from the poem at the end of Daniel Defoe's 1701 History of the Kentish Petition,

Nature has left this tincture in the blood,
That all men would be tyrants if they could,

which was more famously paraphrased by Abigail Adams in a 1776 letter to her husband, John Adams, then serving as a member of the Continental Congress that was about to declare the independence of the American colonies from the English Crown.

(Katara probably doesn't know that, but that's neither here nor there.)

As for the change in wording, Katara's characterization of Azula as a "tyrannical bitch" is because she was one basically every time they saw each other during Katara's lifetime, and Katara is unwilling to believe that she's changed.

By making a slightly catty joke, twitting Katara for the evident fact that she's a bit of a tyrant herself (viz. the way she's obviously cowed all three of the men within earshot, such that none of them dared object to this patent incivility) - instead of getting defensive and violent like she would've in the old days - Azula demonstrates that she has changed far more effectively than she managed to do with her more straightforward earlier attempt at an apology; and thus détente is achieved.

The exchange itself was inspired by a scene near the end of the 1970 Franklin J. Schaffner film Patton, in which General George S. Patton, Jr. - a U.S. Army officer noted throughout the film for his passionate dislike of Russians - is attending a victory party in Berlin when he's approached by a Red Army general and his nervous young aide. The Soviet general says something, and his aide translates for Patton, saying that the general would like to have a drink with him.

"My compliments to the general," Patton replies with a polite smile, "but I do not care to drink with him or any other Russian sonofabitch."

Blanching, the aide blurts, "I cannot tell the general that!"

"You tell him," Patton insists. "Word for word."

With a look of mild terror, the aide does as requested. Furious, the Russian general bellows something back, and the aide turns to Patton and sputters, "He says you're a sonofabitch too!"

Patton regards them both for a second, then grins and replies, "Well, as one sonofabitch to another, I'll drink to that."

>Do like that you've decided that past Avatars can qualify for
>Vallhalla just as much as anyone else, for some reason I was thinking
>that they kinda mostly had to hang in the spirit world of Diqu in case
>the current avatar needs a consult, etc.

Until the Standard Year 2290, that was pretty much the way it worked; past Avatars were more or less stranded in the Spirit World, unable to reach (and indeed unaware of the existence of) Valhalla. Events during the course of that year discombobulated the system somewhat, and for some time thereafter the situation was exactly reversed (much to the era's living Avatar's dismay). At some point between then and 2372, some level of cross traffic has been established between the two realms (parallelling somewhat, though probably coincidentally, the establishment of links between Dìqiú and Zipang in the "big universe"), such that the past Avatars can come and go between Valhalla and the Spirit World essentially at will.

>Now it sounds almost more
>like they could hang there if they so desired, but a lot of them dont
>and just hurry back and meet the avatar there if so needed.

Well, no, by 2390 most have resumed more-or-less permanent residence in the Spirit World. The end of the universe is a pretty special occasion, though, and the ones with particular ties to members of the Einherjar - most notably Aang, whose entire posse is over there - answered the call when Heimdall blew his horn. Any others who did show up for the battle cleared off again after the fighting ended, but Aang never could pass up a party.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>Do like that you've decided that past Avatars can qualify for
>>Vallhalla just as much as anyone else, for some reason I was thinking
>>that they kinda mostly had to hang in the spirit world of Diqu in case
>>the current avatar needs a consult, etc.
>
>Until the Standard Year 2290, that was pretty much the way it worked;
>past Avatars were more or less stranded in the Spirit World, unable to
>reach (and indeed unaware of the existence of) Valhalla. Events
>during the course of that year discombobulated the system somewhat,
>and for some time thereafter the situation was exactly reversed (much
>to the era's living Avatar's dismay). At some point between then and
>2372, some level of cross traffic has been established between the two
>realms (parallelling somewhat, though probably coincidentally, the
>establishment of links between Dìqiú and Zipang in the "big
>universe"), such that the past Avatars can come and go between
>Valhalla and the Spirit World essentially at will.
>
>>Now it sounds almost more
>>like they could hang there if they so desired, but a lot of them dont
>>and just hurry back and meet the avatar there if so needed.
>
>Well, no, by 2390 most have resumed more-or-less permanent residence
>in the Spirit World. The end of the universe is a pretty special
>occasion, though, and the ones with particular ties to members of the
>Einherjar - most notably Aang, whose entire posse is over there -
>answered the call when Heimdall blew his horn. Any others who did
>show up for the battle cleared off again after the fighting ended, but
>Aang never could pass up a party.

Hrm. I was pretty certain the whole reason Corwin was in anguish over the uncertain status of Korra's immortality, and the source of his inability to see her for six years, was because he thought he would never see her again because she had no chance of entering Valhalla. Does this mean Corwin was misinformed? I must admit, I don't think I have ever seen him wrong on a matter of cosmic system mechanics before.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

LAST EDITED ON Jan-14-14 AT 01:26 PM (EST)
 
>Hrm. I was pretty certain the whole reason Corwin was in anguish over
>the uncertain status of Korra's immortality, and the source of his
>inability to see her for six years, was because he thought he would
>never see her again because she had no chance of entering Valhalla.

No, it's more complicated than that. I mean, if nothing else, Corwin knows how to get to Dìqiú's Spirit World (from the Dìqiú side, anyway, so there would still have been a logistical issue there, but still), so even if Korra couldn't get to Valhalla, he'd theoretically be able to find her there. The main problem is really that, however seamless our few glimpses of Valhalla have made it look, dying isn't easy and it's never any fun, and what happens immediately thereafter doesn't always go according to plan.

Without a Valkyrie on hand - and it looked like there wouldn't be one - entry into Valhalla isn't guaranteed at the best of times. As for the Spirit World, well, Bad Shit sometimes happens in there and Corwin doesn't trust the place as far as he could throw it. The whole affair was fraught with far too much, and far too many flavors of, uncertainty for Corwin to have any confidence in a favorable outcome. Yeah, the best-case scenario was still that she'd get to Valhalla anyway, and the second-best was that she'd take up residence in the Spirit World with Naga and the gang, but the non-best-case scenarios ranged from "wandering in eternally forgetful despair through the identity-corroding mists of Niflheim" to "devoured by the soul-eating hounds of Hel and destroyed forever" to stuff he didn't even have the stomach to envision (so, you know, worse than what I just said).

For that matter, some people are... changed by the experience of dying. Most of those we've seen on both sides of the divide, as it were, have handled it pretty well, but there are those who take a long time to recover their equanimity, and those who never do. It seems unlikely in Korra's case that she would be permanently scarred and rendered a different, much less pleasant, individual by the experience - she wasn't by (UNKIND COMPARISON TO ONE OF HER LIFE EXPERIENCES REDACTED), after all, and compared to that dying will presumably be a doddle - but you never quite know ahead of time. Again, it's the uncertainty that's the problem.

Utena mused about that a little too - how some of Corwin's best friends are dead people and she wasn't entirely sure what the big deal was - but the time wasn't right to ask him to elaborate, and either she hasn't felt that time has come yet since (which is entirely possible given what they've all been up to), or we didn't see her do it.

And yes, before you ask the obvious corollary question, it's entirely possible that much of the above is little more than Corwin's imagination running off to a dark place on him late at night, but that doesn't make the pain of it any less real to him.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Jan-14-14 AT 04:53 AM (EST)
 
>*scratches head*
>
>Okay, I think I see the problem here, and its actually personal, in
>and of I'm not as familiar with the events of AtlA as most of us are.
>Of course, in your usual, unflappable style, thats okay, as I'm easily
>able to get the gist of the tension between this Katara and Azula,
>just not quite some of the specifics.

It's like if Hitler had a kid who was just as good as Hitlering, and personally tried to Hitler you then you find out that kid of Hitler's got into heaven.

Katara being a bitch at a party is handling it pretty well.

Edit: Now that I think of it, it's more like if Hitler had a long line of decendent Hitlers who were also really good at Hitlering until Azula became the Last Scion of Hitlers. The Fire Nation wiped out an entire people and more or less wiped out another.

------
Jon Helscher

Oh God, it was me. I was the grognard all along.

>the Last Scion of Hitlers.

I'd -say- that that'd be a hell of a name for a band, save that they'd probably be one of those lame Nazi-wannabee ones rather than something worthwhile (operatic death metal, say) and they'd assuredly be arrested if they set one toe in Germany.

Before now I thought there was nothing much new to find out about Twilight. It's nice to be proved wrong in such an interesting way.

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

>Before now I thought there was nothing much new to find out about
>Twilight. It's nice to be proved wrong in such an interesting way.

Oh, heck, we've seen the tiniest part of all that went on immediately before, during, and just after the Ragnarök. There were huge numbers of people involved, and each one of them has a story. I tried to give a flavor of how sprawling the combat actually was in Nothing That Is In Between - how much more of it there was than what we saw while we were looking at the main characters in Twilight itself; it wasn't so much a battle as a whole war happening all at once.

This is not to say I intend to tell a million stories from the Ragnarök, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were a million stories there.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"There are eight million stories on the Plain of Ragarnok. This has been one of them." - The Naked Doomsday

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

So funny story. Anytime I do a long-form review, I type it up in Wordpad instead of composing it raw on the forums. Sometimes the total length doesn't justify it, but often it does, because the forum isn't an ideal place to dump 1500 words from scratch; among other things, I worry about web browser fuckery dumping the entire thing.

Guess what guy composed a full review of this thing three and a half months ago, congratulated himself on a job well done, and then simply never posted the thing?

Yeah.

So to the extent that anyone still actually cares, here it is. Also updated with materiel that became relevant over the passage of time, so I guess there's added value?

>She put this theory to the Phoenix Queen's prototype Auto-Doc
>as she emerged from its treatment enclosure.
>
>"Well, that's really outside my field," Auto-Doc admitted in his calm,
>unhurried synthetic drawl,

I was really, really expecting some species of "I'm a doctor, not a..." joke here. Not sure if disappointed, or pleased.

>Once there, she regarded herself in the mirror by her wardrobe for a
>moment. She was... not vain, exactly, but she liked the way
>she looked and was not above pausing now and then to admire herself in
>reflective surfaces. She knew she had a pleasing face, a poised and
>elegant manner, and a slim, athletic figure; they were part of her
>toolset, and though less relied upon nowadays than they had been in
>her youth, she took pains to maintain them anyway, because what was
>what she was trained to do with useful tools.

This whole paragraph really works on a lot of levels, especially the ultimate sentence. Nicely done.

>This task had never been all that challenging, and since Mojave, where
>she'd acquired a very handy bit of 21st-century black technology, it
>had ceased to require any particular effort at all. Nowadays,
>approaching (as near as she could calculate it) the biological age of
>seventy, she remained satisfied with what she saw in mirrors. It
>would've been nice if she'd managed to stumble across the PHOENIX
>modification sometime before the age of sixty, but she was well
>aware that there were much worse draws from the life-extension deck
>than perpetual, well-maintained early middle age.

You know, for something that isn't commercially available even for the truly, outrageously wealthy, people seem to stumble across pseudo-immortality quite a lot in Known Space. :)

> She
>caught herself belting on her sidearm out of sheer force of habit and
>laughed as she hung it back on its peg by the door. She never
>really needed it much of anywhere, but she particularly wasn't
>going to need it here, tonight.

Editorial suggestion; you may want to embed a link to the forum thread about Azula's heavily modified That Gun in there, and in the inevitable omnibus, assuming the omnibus is published in html. It might provide interesting context to future readers. That said, I'm unsure of the aesthetics of doing so. I only mention it because it seems obvious.

>it was Admiral MegaZone, the supreme commander of the Wedge Defense
>Force. Azula had heard that he was present, but hadn't seen him in
>the wild chaos of the battle, and she was slightly shocked by his
>appearance, partly because he'd just loomed up out of the chilly
>darkness without warning, and partly because he looked like he'd just
>escaped from a lunatic asylum. (Having once done so herself, she was
>better-positioned than most to know what that looked like.)

It's adorable that Azula thinks she "escaped" from that asylum. :)

>It was an apple, plump and
>fresh-looking, its skin glinting a smooth, polished gold in the glow
>of the Queen's parking lights. It was far too light to be
>made of gold, and when she sniffed at it experimentally, it
>smelled like... well, like an apple,

I am rather embarrassed to admit I had to go look it up before remembering "Oh! Right! The Golden Apples of Idunn. They're not just a Greek thing. Riiiiiiight."

>"Well, well, look at all of you," she observed, smiling wryly. "All
>grown up for the afterlife. Agni, Zuzu, you actually managed to be
>handsome, didn't you? Stayed with the same tragic haircut, though, I
>see." Without giving her red-faced brother an opportunity to respond,
>she moved on.

Well, for a given value of "handsome." Objectively, Zuko was a pretty smokin' adult, even with the scar, but the fact that he looked almost exactly like his dad probably killed it for many if not most of his contemporaries. :)

>"He's right," said Ty Lee, nodding. "You're all grown up too."
> Reddening slightly, she added in a lower voice, "You look
>amazing."

Awwww, Ty Lee.

>Azula read that in her face and sighed. "What else do you want from
>me?" she wondered. "Shall I fall on my sword in shame? Would that
>satisfy you? I don't need your approval, Katara. I offer you
>peace in the spirit of this red day we've just survived. If it suits
>you to throw it in my face in payment for my crimes of old, then so be
>it." She rose from the table. "Just ask yourself as you nurse your
>old hatred - which of us is being spiteful now?"

Okay, that was a dick move on Azula's part.

The speechifying was all very pretty, and I have no doubt that Azula means every word. But... and this is something that would absolutely not have occurred to Azula, and would require someone like Katara or Zuko (or Sokka, when he was being particularly insightful)... forgiveness isn't a matter of being personally validated. It's for the transgressed against to decide what it takes for them to offer it, not the transgressor to demand it.

And generally speaking, absolution requires penance.

>So saying, she turned on her heel and left the feasthall.

Off course, Azula bails before there's a chance for any kind of riposte.

>A moment later Zuko reappeared from the other direction. "Everyone
>can relax, I found Aang - hey, where's Azula?"
>
>"Katara ran her off," Toph remarked.
>
>"Just like old times," said Sokka, nudging his sister with an elbow.
>"Right?"
>
>"You guys are mean," Ty Lee said disconsolately; then she got up and
>went off in pursuit.

"I told you we should have brought the kids."

"Oh yeah. Absolutely, Zuko. Because introducing your kids to their aunt the war criminal would have made things less awkward."

> After all, you two were
>trying to be my friends, and I repaid you by treating you litle
>better than my enemies, even before the end."

Minor typo.

>Ty Lee gazed silently at her for a few seconds, her grey eyes tinted a
>shifting green by the aurora. Azula assumed her long-lost friend was
>searching for words, or possibly preparing to punch her, which she was
>willing to accept - once - as her due after all this time.
>
>What she did instead was somewhat more surprising, and almost as
>aggressive, but considerably less percussive.

INT. DAY - PRODUCTION OFFICE

(GRYPHON and PHIL MOYER glare balefully at piles of scripts. So many scripts.)

PHILIP
(irritably)
Where! Tell me where pinch 2 is supposed to go.

GRYPHON
Act 2!

PHIL
Act 2 is wall-to-wall with this love story! We can't shoehorn in more!

GRYPHON
It's central to the-

(TY LEE enters. She is fetchingly disheveled and her eyes are even more dreamily
focused than usual.)

PHIL
(reflexively)
No refunds.

(TY LEE approaches the desk.)

GRYPHON
Uh... hey, Ty Lee. What can-

(TY LEE manages to hug both of them at once. This is impressive, given PHIL'S
height and GRYPHON'S build.)

TY LEE
You guys do such, such good work. And so cheaply! I've never been more excited
to see a project come in on time and under budget. Let me know if you ever need
a testimonial.

(She kisses them both on the cheeks before releasing them and winks saucily at GRYPHON.)

TY LEE
Oh, and Zuko says you were right, the hardwood is much much nicer than the tile.

(TY LEE exits. PHIL and GRYPHON watch her go with dazed expressions. GRYPHON
turns to PHIL.)

GRYPHON
Now -there's- a pinch 2.

PHIL
(absently spooling a fresh sheet into a typewriter)
Yeah, that was pretty good.

It might just be because, like when you hint around the edges at Korra and Asami, you're completely pandering to my pre-existing prejudices, but that was pretty good. It wasn't the best rapprochement between Ty Lee and Azula I've ever read, but I'd say... top fifteen? And I know that doesn't like much, but I've read an awful, awful lot of stories about Ty Lee and Azula.

(Seriously, so many.)

>She was momentarily taken aback to see how tall
>Aang was as an adult - her mental image of him had still been both
>twelve and short for his age -

And the cheekbones. For such a round-faced kid, Aang ended up with some movie-star looks.

>"Sokka, darling," she said casually,

Man, Katara has probably had nightmares that began with those words and ended with firebending nieces.

>"Sokka," Katara said coolly, "please inform Princess Azula that it is
>not my policy to drink with tyrannical bitches such as
>herself."

That's a dirty, filthy lie. Toph is sitting right there. :)

>"Fire princess 2, ice princess 1," she remarked with a broad grin,
>then elbowed Katara hard enough to jostle her a half-step toward Azula
>(who had uncrossed the stems of her two glasses and now stood holding
>one in each hand with a wry little smile). Katara (pointlessly) shot
>Toph a glare, then turned and stared at Azula in disbelief for a
>second; then, almost unwillingly, she cracked a little smile, then a
>bigger one, and then laughed and took one of the glasses.
>
>"Well," she said philosophically, "as one tyrannical bitch to another,
>I suppose I'll drink to that," and they tapped their glasses together
>and drained them.

Hrrrm.

I'm not sure I'm a fan of such a swift resolution here. It seems a bit... I don't want to say contrived, that's too harsh. Forced, is I guess the word? There's... a large chasm between Azula and Katara, one that was primarily dug by Azula, and I don't really feel it's been adequately bridged. With the others, sure. Zuko's love for his sister is unconditional. Aang doesn't hold grudges. Neither does Ty Lee. Sokka has surprising moments of zen when it comes to his interpersonal relationships. Toph is... Toph. Suki isn't here but I expect she would probably be filled with such vitriol as to make even even Katara blush a bit.

Katara holds grudges and is suspicious and demands substantial and repeated evidence of good faith before extending a hand, I think.

Yeah, sure, Azula helped Zuko kill their dad. I kinda feel like that's just the price of admission to Katara Land. If Azula actually wants to go on the rides, that costs extra.

Good story overall, though. It's definitely a transitional part of Desolation Angel; I get the impression a large part of it is setting up the last bit.

-Merc
Keep Rat

>>her youth, she took pains to maintain them anyway, because what was
>>what she was trained to do with useful tools.
>
>This whole paragraph really works on a lot of levels, especially the
>ultimate sentence. Nicely done.

Thank you. (Except for the typo; it's (obviously) supposed to say "that was what she was trained to do".)

>You know, for something that isn't commercially available even for the
>truly, outrageously wealthy, people seem to stumble across
>pseudo-immortality quite a lot in Known Space. :)

Sample size artifact. Looked at more broadly, no more than a few dozen people have appeared with such things in hand vs. a galaxy containing many trillions of sentient beings.

(Also, GENOM's "RETRO" treatment is in fact commercially available to the truly, outrageously wealthy, as are memory-transfer clones and the higher grades of cyborg replacement body.)

>Editorial suggestion; you may want to embed a link to the forum thread
>about Azula's heavily modified That Gun in there, and in the
>inevitable omnibus, assuming the omnibus is published in html.

Hmm, I was just preassembling the existing bits of that yesterday; I included the Mojave BPGD and Tops Casino Interlude, and the Phoenix Queen BPGD, but I forgot about That Gun.

>>escaped from a lunatic asylum. (Having once done so herself, she was
>>better-positioned than most to know what that looked like.)
>
>It's adorable that Azula thinks she "escaped" from that asylum. :)

She kind of did, though. Admittedly, she didn't get very far, but she totally escaped.

>I am rather embarrassed to admit I had to go look it up before
>remembering "Oh! Right! The Golden Apples of Idunn. They're not
>just a Greek thing. Riiiiiiight."

I enjoyed the convergence there while I was coming up with that scene. Zoner's connection to Eris and Discordianism in general makes the obvious connection to the "ΤΗΙ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗΙ" apple jump out, but they're in Asgard and what's about to happen is lifespan-related... it fits together really nicely.

>>"Just ask yourself as you nurse your
>>old hatred - which of us is being spiteful now?"
>
>Okay, that was a dick move on Azula's part.

Well, like the old saying doesn't go, you can take the girl out of the evil...

>The speechifying was all very pretty, and I have no doubt that Azula
>means every word. But... and this is something that would absolutely
>not have occurred to Azula, and would require someone like Katara or
>Zuko (or Sokka, when he was being particularly insightful)...
>forgiveness isn't a matter of being personally validated. It's for the
>transgressed against to decide what it takes for them to offer it, not
>the transgressor to demand it.

That's all true - particularly the acknowledgement that it's not a conclusion Azula would be likely to arrive at on her own. In spite of the cautious détente at the end, this business remains largely unfinished. More on this in a bit.

>And generally speaking, absolution requires penance.

Azula has presumably not considered this consciously, but her unconscious conclusion is that going the fuck insane and all that attended it, and then spending several decades convinced that the world she remembered either was no more or never had been, pretty well covered that part. She may not be right about that, but it's where she's coming from.

>>So saying, she turned on her heel and left the feasthall.
>
>Off course, Azula bails before there's a chance for any kind of
>riposte.

That is, indeed, her usual technique. Besides - in her experience, if you let Katara get in the last word, it tends to take the form of her drowning you.

>It might just be because, like when you hint around the edges at Korra
>and Asami, you're completely pandering to my pre-existing prejudices,

Just for the record, that particular phenomenon has nothing to do with your prejudices. :)

>>"Sokka, darling," she said casually,
>
>Man, Katara has probably had nightmares that began with those
>words and ended with firebending nieces.

I am remembering a fan comic I once saw which ends with Zuko declaring, "I did not need to see that!"

>I'm not sure I'm a fan of such a swift resolution here. It seems a
>bit... I don't want to say contrived, that's too harsh. Forced, is I
>guess the word? There's... a large chasm between Azula and Katara, one
>that was primarily dug by Azula, and I don't really feel it's been
>adequately bridged.
>
>Katara holds grudges and is suspicious and demands substantial and
>repeated evidence of good faith before extending a hand, I think.
>
>Yeah, sure, Azula helped Zuko kill their dad. I kinda feel like that's
>just the price of admission to Katara Land. If Azula actually
>wants to go on the rides, that costs extra.

I agree with your objections, but feel they are premature and slightly out of context. Consider the following:

1) That's only the first drink, not a declaration of eternal sisterhood. Like you said - price of admission. It's an acknowledgement that a bridge might be buildable, not that there's already one there. (Patton had a drink with that Russian general in the scene this joke was based on, but he didn't change his opinion of the Soviet Union overall.)

2) It was offered very grudgingly, and in large part because to do otherwise would probably have caused a scene sufficient (unlike the last one) to permanently mar the occasion for everyone in the vicinity.

3) Katara's taking things a little more impulsively than usual at that point, on account of she's already a bit lit by that stage in the evening because

4) THEY ALL JUST SURVIVED THE END OF THE WORLD.

As such, you should a) not look at it as a resolution and b) cut Katara a little slack, I think. :)

That said, I've had a companion piece to this one in mind that depicts the following day (concurrent with the part of Twilight where everyone's picking up their stuff and trying to figure out what month it is). The first scene is largely written, but I've been uncertain whether it adds anything useful beyond a couple of cute one-liners to the storyline. In the light of the above, I think it does, or can be made to, and so there are most likely two pieces left to go in Desolation Angel (the last of which won't be a Forum story, but exclusive to the collected edition, as with the tag stories on the Mini-Omnis).

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>This whole paragraph really works on a lot of levels, especially the
>>ultimate sentence. Nicely done.
>
>Thank you. (Except for the typo; it's (obviously) supposed to say
>"that was what she was trained to do".)

And of course I completely missed that, because unlike the latter one my spellchecker didn't automatically flag it.

>>You know, for something that isn't commercially available even for the
>>truly, outrageously wealthy, people seem to stumble across
>>pseudo-immortality quite a lot in Known Space. :)
>
>Sample size artifact. Looked at more broadly, no more than a few
>dozen people have appeared with such things in hand vs. a galaxy
>containing many trillions of sentient beings.

True enough. And I suppose most of those would have been either uninterested in or incapable of monetizing it. Although one imagines the Kilrathi have gotten up to some intense bullshit with their strain of Omega-2. But now I'm wandering far afield. :)

>(Also, GENOM's "RETRO" treatment is in fact commercially
>available to the truly, outrageously wealthy, as are memory-transfer
>clones and the higher grades of cyborg replacement body.)

So what you're saying is, the Broadbanks are gonna be with us for awhile, and possibly even generate more daughters. :)

>>Editorial suggestion; you may want to embed a link to the forum thread
>>about Azula's heavily modified That Gun in there, and in the
>>inevitable omnibus, assuming the omnibus is published in html.
>
>Hmm, I was just preassembling the existing bits of that yesterday; I
>included the Mojave BPGD and Tops Casino Interlude, and the Phoenix
>Queen BPGD, but I forgot about That Gun.

So the unintentional delay was actually serendipitous! Now I feel better.

>>>escaped from a lunatic asylum. (Having once done so herself, she was
>>>better-positioned than most to know what that looked like.)
>>
>>It's adorable that Azula thinks she "escaped" from that asylum. :)
>
>She kind of did, though. Admittedly, she didn't get very far,
>but she totally escaped.

Well, only if you count the company of her brother and his idiot friends as a kind of insane asylum.

Oh.

Hmm.

>>I am rather embarrassed to admit I had to go look it up before
>>remembering "Oh! Right! The Golden Apples of Idunn. They're not
>>just a Greek thing. Riiiiiiight."
>
>I enjoyed the convergence there while I was coming up with that scene.
> Zoner's connection to Eris and Discordianism in general makes the
>obvious connection to the "ΤΗΙ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗΙ" apple jump out,
>but they're in Asgard and what's about to happen is
>lifespan-related... it fits together really nicely.

It really does. Kudos. And I always enjoy seeing Zoner. I understand why you're reluctant to use him, of course, given that he doesn't really "belong" to you, but he occupies a narrative and metaphysical slot I find intensely interesting.

Well, intensely interesting when it isn't the umpteenth story whose theme boils down to "MegaZone deals with depression in unhealthy ways" but in that instance I am reluctant to judge, you know?

>>And generally speaking, absolution requires penance.
>
>Azula has presumably not considered this consciously, but her
>unconscious conclusion is that going the fuck insane and
>all that attended it, and then spending several decades convinced that
>the world she remembered either was no more or never had been, pretty
>well covered that part. She may not be right about that, but
>it's where she's coming from.

That much I figured. It is absolutely and completely the conclusion Azula would come to. I would be prepared to argue the point with her that there's a difference between "suffering" and "atonement" but that sort of shit is Aang's job. :)

>>>So saying, she turned on her heel and left the feasthall.
>>
>>Off course, Azula bails before there's a chance for any kind of
>>riposte.
>
>That is, indeed, her usual technique. Besides - in her experience, if
>you let Katara get in the last word, it tends to take the form of her
>drowning you.

It was just a little bit of drowning! She's taking it so personally. Why, after the psychotic break I bet she barely even remembers being encased in an icy tomb, completely cut off from her element and unable to move, but completely aware of what was happening.

>>It might just be because, like when you hint around the edges at Korra
>>and Asami, you're completely pandering to my pre-existing prejudices,
>
>Just for the record, that particular phenomenon has nothing to
>do with your prejudices. :)

Well, I'll drink to that anyway, sir. :)

>>>"Sokka, darling," she said casually,
>>
>>Man, Katara has probably had nightmares that began with those
>>words and ended with firebending nieces.
>
>I am remembering a fan comic I once saw which ends with Zuko
>declaring, "I did not need to see that!"

That would be this'n right here.

(The accepted portmanteau for the two of them is "Sokkla." Depending on ones internet tolerance, one can have either an amusing or horrifying few hours entering that term into the search engine or art repository of your choice.)

>1) That's only the first drink, not a declaration of eternal
>sisterhood. Like you said - price of admission. It's an
>acknowledgement that a bridge might be buildable, not that there's
>already one there. (Patton had a drink with that Russian general in
>the scene this joke was based on, but he didn't change his opinion of
>the Soviet Union overall.)

Hmm. All right. The sudden halt at the end threw me off a bit. (More on THAT later.)

>2) It was offered very grudgingly, and in large part because to do
>otherwise would probably have caused a scene sufficient (unlike the
>last one) to permanently mar the occasion for everyone in the
>vicinity.

Now that makes a ton of sense. Katara is never, ever going to stop being everyone's mother.

>3) Katara's taking things a little more impulsively than usual at that
>point, on account of she's already a bit lit by that stage in the
>evening because
>
>4) THEY ALL JUST SURVIVED THE END OF THE WORLD.
>
>As such, you should a) not look at it as a resolution and b) cut
>Katara a little slack, I think. :)

Duly noted, and slack cut. While I feel as though (as you yourself are kind enough to acknowledge) my criticism is not without merit, it's always a bit tricky to do that with things that are in-progress. I felt like the fight at the end of Le Droit du Dragon was completely superfluous until we got back to Diqiu, you might recall.

So I try to balance "I don't know what's coming next" with my natural tendency to talk about everything all at once. :)

>That said, I've had a companion piece to this one in mind that depicts
>the following day (concurrent with the part of Twilight where
>everyone's picking up their stuff and trying to figure out what month
>it is). The first scene is largely written, but I've been uncertain
>whether it adds anything useful beyond a couple of cute one-liners to
>the storyline. In the light of the above, I think it does, or can be
>made to, and so there are most likely two pieces left to go in
>Desolation Angel (the last of which won't be a Forum story, but
>exclusive to the collected edition, as with the tag stories on the
>Mini-Omnis).

This. I approve of all of this and what it implies. So much.

-Merc
Keep Rat

>>(Also, GENOM's "RETRO" treatment is in fact commercially
>>available to the truly, outrageously wealthy, as are memory-transfer
>>clones and the higher grades of cyborg replacement body.)
>
>So what you're saying is, the Broadbanks are gonna be with us for
>awhile, and possibly even generate more daughters. :)

I doubt they're that rich any more. Juri's rather seen to that.

>>>It's adorable that Azula thinks she "escaped" from that asylum. :)
>>
>>She kind of did, though. Admittedly, she didn't get very far,
>>but she totally escaped.
>
>Well, only if you count the company of her brother and his idiot
>friends as a kind of insane asylum.

Oh, no, I don't mean that. I mean the time she actually escaped. She only got as far as the mailroom before Zuko caught up with her again, but it still counts. :)

>That much I figured. It is absolutely and completely the conclusion
>Azula would come to. I would be prepared to argue the point with her
>that there's a difference between "suffering" and "atonement" but that
>sort of shit is Aang's job. :)

Well, she's also done a tolerable amount of good for the world in that time; but not for Katara, so I suppose it could be argued that it doesn't really count. That wasn't the time or place to get into that, though.

>I bet she barely
>even remembers being encased in an icy tomb, completely cut off from
>her element and unable to move, but completely aware of what was
>happening.

You know what, I bet that's not true. Azula has a really good memory.

>>As such, you should a) not look at it as a resolution and b) cut
>>Katara a little slack, I think. :)
>
>Duly noted, and slack cut. While I feel as though (as you yourself are
>kind enough to acknowledge) my criticism is not without merit

Well, say rather that it wouldn't have been without merit if the conclusion you drew it from was accurate. It's just that it wasn't. :)

>always a bit tricky to do that with things that are in-progress. I
>felt like the fight at the end of Le Droit du Dragon was
>completely superfluous until we got back to Diqiu, you might recall.

Well, as with Droit, hold that thought. I'm even telling you in advance this time. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>So what you're saying is, the Broadbanks are gonna be with us for
>>awhile, and possibly even generate more daughters. :)
>
>I doubt they're that rich any more. Juri's rather seen to that.

Well, I mean... obviously, I am not an expert in galactic finance in the 25th century, but I have trouble seeing how the Broadbank's didn't come away from Aztechnology being bought out by GENOM even richer than they had been before. Although I might have missed them doing something insane like dumping all their stock in a fit of pique before the deal was inked.

>>That much I figured. It is absolutely and completely the conclusion
>>Azula would come to. I would be prepared to argue the point with her
>>that there's a difference between "suffering" and "atonement" but that
>>sort of shit is Aang's job. :)
>
>Well, she's also done a tolerable amount of good for the world in that
>time; but not for Katara, so I suppose it could be argued that it
>doesn't really count. That wasn't the time or place to get into that,
>though.

That's entirely true; she has. And reasonable, fair-minded people are going to take that into consideration. But she owes a more direct debt to Diqiu in general and the people she wronged personally in particular, and I would humbly submit that she can't just make that "not count" by deciding to be a galactic hero, which is among other things a super-fun thing to do. :)

I see certain parallels between her and Anakyn shar Atrados, actually. It's pretty great that Anakyn has gotten his head screwed on right and stopped with all the, you know, the genocide, and that he saved Naboo and Len and Emmy and is mentoring Rei and suchly. But he owes a more direct debt to the surviving Atlanteans, and he doesn't get to be the one to decide how, or if, he works it off.

You are, of course, right that it wasn't the time or place to get into that with Azula, both in-universe and narratively.

-Merc
Keep Rat

>
>>>So what you're saying is, the Broadbanks are gonna be with us for
>>>awhile, and possibly even generate more daughters. :)
>>
>>I doubt they're that rich any more. Juri's rather seen to that.
>
>Well, I mean... obviously, I am not an expert in galactic finance in
>the 25th century, but I have trouble seeing how the Broadbank's didn't
>come away from Aztechnology being bought out by GENOM even richer than
>they had been before. Although I might have missed them doing
>something insane like dumping all their stock in a fit of pique before
>the deal was inked.
>

That rather depends upon how much stock Daddy Broadbank actually received from Grandpa Broadbank. The daughters Broadbank received large chunks from their Grandpa, IIRC, but we don't know how much Grandpa gave his son. Heck, he may have donated large chunks of the stock, even, especially if he didn't approve of his son's conduct.

Except that we know that Grandpa Broadbank deliberately prevented his son from taking over when he retired, as he felt that Ephrem wasn't ready to lead the company. I doubt he left much, if any of his stock to his son later on; particularly in light of Mary receiving enough between her stock and Juri's to hold a controlling percentage.

>Except that we know that Grandpa Broadbank deliberately prevented his
>son from taking over when he retired, as he felt that Ephrem wasn't
>ready to lead the company. I doubt he left much, if any of his stock
>to his son later on; particularly in light of Mary receiving enough
>between her stock and Juri's to hold a controlling percentage.

I don't remember that detail, but it goes along with what I was saying. There's no evidence Ephrem actually owned a large block of stock - but he may have controlled a large block as guardian for his daughters. From S5 "Prelude in A Minor" we know between gifts from her grandparents, Mary had 45%, Elizabeth's shares were 10% (later gifted to Kaitlyn), and Juri's shares (gifted by MegaZone) were around 30%. That's 85% right there. Of the remaining 15%, maybe Clarissa received some, perhaps other outside investors, etc. - but there's no textual evidence I can find showing Ephrem holding any significant number of shares. With Clarissa's effective treason, even if she held shares, I'm not sure what would happen with them - maybe seized by the Zeta Cygni government and placed in escrow pending trial?

Hmm, you're right. I thought that 45% Mary had was a combination of what she and Liza had, but she somehow ended up with that much on her own. I guess her grandparents just... totally skipped their kids.

Mind you, I still don't see how that results in a significant lessening of the Broadbank's fortunes. Even if they fire Ephrem's ass, an executive at his level probably had a sweet, sweet termination clause in his contract, and likely wasn't relying on his salary for much of his income anyway. Plus, dudes like that usually land on their feet, and "forced out by Wedge affiliated hippies" has a lot of cachet in certain sectors of the corporate world, I understand.

I suppose Juri could have made Genom using its clout to blacklist him industrywide a condition of the sale, I guess. Larry isn't above that sort of deal.

-Merc
Keep Rat

One thing to consider is the possibility that he has a lot of shares, it's just that they are all preferred rather than common<1>. That keeps him away from the levers of power while still giving him the money involved.

<1> Common shares get votes, preferred shares always pay a dividend, (failure to do so turns them into common shares).

LAST EDITED ON Apr-27-14 AT 06:14 AM (EDT)
 
I dunno. I have this gut feeling that there's a Story behind how Mary got 45% of the stock at such a young age, above and beyond her grandparents' largesse. Could very easily be the hour and the week from Hell clouding my judgment, though.

All that aside, I've been largely silent about the Avatar stuff in general, and there's a reason for that - I know absolutely nothing about the canon material. That being said, I've gleaned enough from context and other threads to say that you're doing wonderful things with the characters (and would have said that eventually anyway, since I've enjoyed reading about them regardless of the source).

Sincerely looking forward to seeing more of them, and everyone else.

>Oh, no, I don't mean that. I mean the time she actually
>escaped. She only got as far as the mailroom before Zuko caught
>up with her again, but it still counts. :)

She shouldn't have stopped to read her fan mail.

Polychrome

>>Oh, no, I don't mean that. I mean the time she actually
>>escaped. She only got as far as the mailroom before Zuko caught
>>up with her again, but it still counts. :)
>
>She shouldn't have stopped to read her fan mail.

I know, right? Still, it's like I've always said about Azula: her priorities were often wrong, but at least she stuck with them. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.