Seeing Azula so happy lifted Ty Lee's spirits almost equally in the same degree. Her royal friend smiled more and was genuinely more personable despite the hard, steely foundation underneath. The soldiers of the 11th must've really helped Azula focus her malice that the palace servants were bowing to her out of deep respect instead of fear.
And Xing must've done a really big deal too. Ty Lee fought hard to stop herself from teasing Azula when she spotted the hints of gleeful pinkness to her aura.
Azula. Pink!
Whatever happened the other day must've been great if the princess was smiling warmly for the rest of the day. The uneasy, awkward looks of purple and blue from the royal bodyguards gave Ty Lee enough of a hint. Or the knowing grins exchanged between the officers of 11th.
She definitely should find the time to dig out the details…
Ty Lee couldn't be sure if she imagined it or if Azula actually broke into happy skipping several times. She was most definitely humming, though, and Ty Lee caught her friend's hand absently moving before she remembered where she was and snapped her limb back to position. Xing was less pink than red, but was still interesting to see how he tried to keep his composure despite breaking into a goofy grin every time he looked at Azula. And how neither him or Azula cared that people were present as they quietly held hands and matched pink-red auras.
Which all meant to say that coming to Ba Sing Se had been the right choice despite the general meh-ness of the recently conquered city. Besides the couple watching, Ty Lee got to spend time with the regiment that adopted Azula, and found them to all be interesting people...if a bit sharper around the edges than Mai pretended to be. Good people, but not the kind you want to peeve off. Azula's uncle was around too, and he was always free to regale her with many interesting stories about tea and traveling. More interestingly, the soon-to-be former prisoners of the 11th were also mostly open to conversation. Quite a few of them were wary at first, but after a few days, they tolerated her presence with gentler smiles and less guarded words.
Ty Lee rarely focused too much on what the people she interacted with said, she just liked watching their auras play out. Iroh had a gentle, breezy glow to his cyan calmness as he talked about the benefits of particular tea leaves, while the soft curmudgeon Yama had a thin shell of spiky yellow aggravation almost totally obscured his blue-purple melancholy that was specked with deep reds of joy when he opened up about his past as the uncle to the Earth King. There was also a sweet and shy waterbender girl called Uki that quickly broke out of her timid blue into an excited yellow-red when she spoke of how the 11th looked after her. With how cute she acted, it was no wonder the troops around Uki kept a protective eye on her.
Everyone here was so interesting! And they weren't so stuffy about showing it, not to a friend of the crown princess.
Well, maybe the Earth Kingdom soldiers stationed in more public parts were bores, but they were going through a tough time so Ty Lee graciously forgave them.
When Azula invited Ty Lee to observe her and Xing's first public speech, of course Ty Lee giddily accepted the opportunity. She didn't want to miss Azula's pinkness when the princess stood with Xing in public.
Riding atop Bosco, the fluffy bear Ty Lee adopted after the poor thing was abandoned by the mean Earth King, Ty Lee fought to keep herself from bursting from excitement as she took in the sight around her. The not-so-formal stage and arrangement of people that would've probably incited scandalous whispers back home because the public were allowed to get so close without enforcing a proper dress code or something, the surreptitious placement of people on rooftops and street corners, the diverse people gathered behind Azula and Xing…
And Ty Lee got to meet- well, take a closer glance more like, the group of girls that Azula highly respected. The Kyoshi Warriors had been secluded after their horrific ordeal, and Ty Lee understood why and sympathized with them. They were so much more brittle now, compared to when Ty Lee last saw them in the colonies, but they were defiantly fighting off the blackness of fear gnawing at the edges of their aura.
Ty Lee would have to check with Azula if it'd be possible to meet them. Maybe she could help the girls in some way or another… Such strong people did not deserve to have such ugly black horrors tainting their auras.
Presently, the whole speech thing was going off well enough, judging from the silence of the crowd. There were bubbles of anger and resentment, but it was understandable, expected even for circumstances like this. Some people were particularly ugly in their auras due to their hate, but Ty Lee shrugged it off, trusting fear of the Fire Nation to keep them in line, like the various villagers she'd encountered in the colonies with Azula.
It was a mistake, it turned out, because Suki, the Kyoshi Warrior leader, was suddenly moving with worrying urgency, and the guards around Xing and Azula sparked orange in alertness.
Then one of them launched a fire bolt into the air, causing a disappointing explosion, which was soon followed by several more rumbling explosions from the nearby noble mansions. Ty Lee was caught by surprise for a moment as she saw people burst through the debris cloud of the ruined buildings.
"Full overwatch!" Xing's order had the bodyguards and soldiers of the 11th snapping into action, stepping up to blast down the larger pieces of flying masonry with their fire.
Armed people - some in armor, some not, all dirty and desperate - pushed through or simply cut their way through the crowd, sowing blind panic. The archers and firebenders on the rooftop let loose their projectiles, picking off some of the scowling terrorists, but then arrows from seemingly all around began to zip towards the soldiers' position.
"Down with the Fire Nation!" someone yelled, a hate-wreathed boy with novel hook swords, and the cry was echoed by his accomplices as they tried to charge towards Xing and Azula.
Tried, because the 11th were making it very hard for them. The boy was the closest, and he recklessly darted forwards with a bestial scowl on his face and his blades swinging, ignoring the fact that his friends were still some ways behind him.
His aggression was quickly dampened when one of Xing's bodyguards intercepted him. Hook boy's moves were flashy, but so clearly in need of refinement. The bodyguard barely shifted his head to avoid a wide swing, and used his bracer to catch the second hook sword to yank its wielder towards him. In less that four moves, hook boy was unceremoniously knocked to the ground with a helmeted headbutt.
More of his comrades were pouring over, though. Many wore Earth Kingdom soldiers' uniform, while a surprising number were in richer nobles' attire. The guards on the rooftops were busy dueling with hidden enemy archers to suppress the incoming tide, but it looked like the rest of the 11th had it well in hand. Soldiers closed ranks and stood firm to meet the roaring human tide with spears and flaming fists, breaking bones and searing faces with machine-like efficiency.
A few more arrows rained down on the stage, but it was the waterbenders and earthbenders that intercepted them this time. Yama and his followers quickly tore up the stage and walls behind them to fling at the arrows, while the projectiles that remained plinked harmlessly off ice shields created by Kilin and her people.
"Evacuate the civilians!" Xing ordered. "Protect the princess!"
"Fool, protect yourself too!" Azula added, before turning to Ty Lee and flaring into a worried yellow.
Ty Lee was about to ask why, but her royal friend literally flew over to tackle her to the ground. Ty Lee coughed all the air in her lungs out, but her surprise increased when she heard a solid thunk reverberating from Azula on top of her.
"Stop dawdling, Ty Lee," the princess admonished as she got up, seemingly unaffected by the small boulder rolling off her back as she got up. "It's not safe here, I suggest you lead some of our guests back."
Ty Lee blinked several times as she rose up. Azula had saved her?
"Oh, don't worry about me," her friend said, misinterpreting her stare. "I've got armor underneath. You, on the other hand, don't."
Azula had just saved her. Armor or not, she'd thoughtlessly taken a hit for Ty Lee.
"No," Ty Lee said resolutely as the armored forms of Azula's bodyguards formed an inviolable ring around them. "I can help."
She met Azula's searching gaze for a second before the other girl gave a nod. "Fine. The rabble on the ground should be handled in no time. Can you deal with the hidden archers?"
"Leave it to me, Azula." And with that, Ty Lee launched herself past the protective ring of armor and leapt her way from walls and cracked columns towards the rooftops. She quickly sped past the clamor of fighting, pausing only to send a few disapproving strikes to some men screaming 'Traitors!' as they hewed through the panicked civilians with their blades. Earth Kingdom armor poorly protected their pressure points, so it was a simple matter of skipping down, immobilizing them with a flurry of strikes to the right places, and then returning to the rooftops as firebenders landed to clean up.
She found the first group of archers holing up in an abandoned noble's house. It took no effort in avoiding their arrows, and Ty Lee slipped in through the same window the group was shooting at her from. The men clumsily began to switch to cleavers and axes, but they were far too late.
A hard kick into one man's throat sent him grasping his neck as he fell. At the same time, Ty Lee's fingers shot out and stabbed at the exposed pressure points of his comrades she was flying past, numbing their arms and dropping their weapons. A carefully applied sweeping kick as she landed swept off another man to send his head knocking painfully against the wall, and the attack transitioned into an upwards kick between the legs of the remaining opponent, sending him on his knees as he gave a pained whimper.
All five men were down in barely six seconds since Ty Lee made her entrance.
The girl peeked out the window to wave down a squad of firebendings soaring through the air, and after waiting for their arrival, she headed off to find some more unwelcome ambushers.
*****
Iroh stood protectively with the soldiers of the 11th around the waterbenders and earthbenders keeping the skies clear of arrows. These insurgents were poorly trained, but there was a surprising amount of them, considering the initial reports of a relatively docile population.
It wasn't until General Fong on the other end dropped into a stance and sent a wall of earth shooting into a squad of firebenders that things clicked.
"For Ba Sing Se!" the Earth Kingdom general yelled, and his men began to engage the surprised soldiers of the 11th. His two colleagues in the meanwhile were simply stunned.
Thankfully neither General Yiu, General Sung, or their officers joined in once their senses returned. Instead, they quickly faded back, torn loyalties keeping them from participating.
Good, the less chaos to this melee, the better.
It was a bold plan, to feign obedience right up until this point, but General Fong had made a huge mistake. He'd placed himself and his secondaries in the heart of the Fire Nation presence, which for all their advantage of surprise, left woefully outnumbered once Yiu and Sung abstained from the coup.
"Fire Lancers! For the princess! For Xing!" Newly promoted Colonel Mozi rallied the troops and proved the point almost immediately. After the initial surprise and casualties, the Fire Nation soldiers promptly recovered and tore into their backstabbers with daggers and an intimidating ferocity. Those Ba Sing Se officers that were isolated were brought down screaming as the troops stabbed to maim, not kill.
General Fong was immediately beset by a squad of Xing's dreaded Han unit. They engaged by throwing jars that vomited noxious fumes once they shattered on the ground. Iroh himself had to bring his sleeve to his face as he watched the silhouette of the general and his men coughing and retching helplessly as they stumbled blindly out of the smog. The Hans wasted no time and waded into lung-burning smoke to pursue and subdue them, adding the cracking of bones to the cacophony of violence.
Elsewhere, more rebels were pouring in from the ruined buildings, the earthbenders among them creating ramps that allowed them to leap over the 11th's defensive line to try reaching Xing and Azula.
The couple were not making it easy, though.
Azula's blue fire joined her bodyguards' as they ruthlessly burned away any and all hostiles in their vicinity. Iroh had mixed emotions as he saw his niece grinning as she set men alight and left them to scream as they burned. He understood it to be a pragmatic move - a panicking man on fire is far less a threat than one that is neither of those states - but it still didn't sit well with him.
Very few enemies reached close enough for the royal bodyguards to actually engage in melee, to the point that they began to fire on other targets engaged with the 11th.
A massive armored man appeared, decked out in the ornamentation of a general's champion, roaring a challenge before he charged at Azula's position. Iroh felt a spike of pride as his niece barely put any attention on the needlessly showy attempt, dismissively flinging a burst of azure flame that broke the man's charge and sent him tumbling to the ground right before her ring of bodyguards. With no immediate enemies to deal with, they dealt with him with appropriate harshness, two bodyguards descending on the champion with apathetic ruthlessness before they stomped hard on his shoulders and knees to break the joints.
"If you're quite done with that, we still have actual threats to deal with." Admirably Azula didn't even offer a sideways glance at the beatdown, focusing fully on nearby enemies that she could fling her fire at.
Xing on the other hand was proving his reputation. With his bodyguards forming a much looser ring around him, the young prince carved through the thickest enemy formations like a chopstick through a block of tofu. Small bursts of white flames dropped groups of enemies to the ground with charred stumps. A short blade flashed out, glowing hot and sizzling as it slipped into armpits or necks. His bodyguards were no less brutal, each holding their own against three or more opponents at a time and leaving behind smoldering, screaming heaps of flesh.
Where Azula bore contempt, Xing was visibly annoyed. He faced down a group of earthbenders, and after a glare they fell to the ground screaming, and it took Iroh a second to notice their feet turning a bright, scalded red. This invisible firebending of the Prince of Ba Sing Se was most intriguing indeed, and would definitely require more investigation. Iroh could already tell that it was not being used liberally, like Xing's white flames, suggesting a similar lack of finer control.
Come to think of it, he wasn't throwing out too much white fire either. Was he worried about collateral, or was his firebending that unrefined that he couldn't afford to unleash it with allies all around him?
"Fuckwit Fong…" Old Yama muttered from behind Iroh, distracting the prince from his thoughts. "Knew he was browning his nose a bit too much…" Yama stomped his foot to create a dome that protected a squad of the 11th from a mob, and then exploded the dome outwards to pepper the assailants with jagged debris.
"Ah, come of it," his counterpart, the waterbender Kilin admonished while she smirked and sent a whip of water into a group of charging rebels. "You're having as much fun as all of us."
Yama did not argue the point, but opted instead for a different line of grumbling. "Fuck the fun. Ba Sing Se's already got a shit reputation to deal with, now they're making it worse… Stupid, short-sighted amateurs… I swear, these idiots are as brainless as my sister's twat of a husband…"
Iroh didn't hear the rest of the grumbling as he stepped forward to blast away some earthbended boulders. Predictably, Fong's spearmen followed up after the rocky projectile, and Iroh was more than ready to knock them down with quick bursts of fire. He'd deal with the earthbender, but the poor man was already brought down by a couple of soldiers jabbing their spears into his shoulders.
His old instincts flaring, Iroh took a step back just in time to avoid a volley of arrows flying past him and bouncing off the stone wall. After the initial stunt, the firebenders avoided further dealing with the potentially volatile projectiles and wisely left it to the waterbenders and earthbenders while they dealt with more immediate threats.
It was impressive to see such cooperation between the elements, but Iroh would mull over themes and symbolism later. Right now, he was getting distracted. He crouched to anchor himself and stepped into a charging man in the uniform of an Earth Kingdom captain, and then threw his opponent over his shoulders. To dissuade the captain from rising, Iroh sent a powerful jab down between the man's neck and shoulders that sent his eyes rolling up into his head.
Despite the familiar exhilaration of battle rising in him, Iroh went back to his position to guard the water and earthbenders, contenting himself with watching most of the fighting play out. Some of the 11th were on the ground, though their fallen were vastly outnumbered by the growing carpet of smoking or writhing enemies around them.
Though outnumbered, the regiment was fending off an entire - admittedly poorly organized - army with admirable effort. With their treacherous general down and unable to lead them, the insurgents rushing the lines acted little better than armed mobs, and fell just as easily to the cold discipline of the 11th.
Some firebenders were rocketing through the air to hunt down enemy archers, diving into windows or dousing them with generous servings of fire. Those soldiers still keeping their position on the rooftops provided precise arrow and fire support that picked out leaders or particular threats. The tanks became strongpoints for firebenders to safely firebend from, the metal hulls protecting them from rock spikes, arrows and spears. Noxious smoke wafted through the mobs, rendering them into helpless, coughing prey for the soldiers who were far more resistant to easily pacify.
A collective shriek from the other end drew Iroh's attention to a group of girls, the rehabilitated Kyoshi Warriors, joining the fray with loaned blades and spears. One of them dove straight towards a boy with hook swords who had been earlier thrown aside.
The boy was now up again and trying to gang up with the other insurgents on a squad of soldiers, but had to roll away to avoid the Kyoshi Warrior's charge. He rose up with a pretty flourish of his hook swords, but he didn't last more than a couple of swings before she had her short sword buried in his gut and a blurring roundhouse kick properly knocked him out of the fight.
A blur of movement nearby caught Iroh's attention, and he saw a growling, roaring mob rushing towards Xing. Many were culled by the concentrated fire directed at them, but there were enough of them to regret entering within arms' reach of the prince. Despite his bodyguards' protective ring loosening, Xing was far from vulnerable. Men screamed as smoke billowed under their armor plates. Earthbenders writhed on their backs, their bare feet blistering and scalding red. Several men dropped to the ground clawing at their necks as their mouths leaked smoke.
A diminished volley of arrows flew in, detonating prematurely to leave a thick cloud of smoke. Xing's and Azula's bodyguards instinctively closed in around them, just in time to catch a second volley that shot through the smoke and plinked off their armor. Some of the 11th's warriors stumbled as arrowheads unluckily slipped into joints, but not a few of the unarmored civilian rebels were studded with arrow shafts.
"Now!"
The sudden pause in momentum elicited a yell from the surviving rebels, and they surged out again. A small mob of rebel commoners rushed at Xing with axes and spears, forcing his protective ring of guards to remain in close formation. Men died with a disconcerting fervor as they pressed the bodyguards, even to the point of grabbing onto the firebenders with their dying breaths.
Similarly there was a surge towards Azula, forcing a similar reaction from her royal bodyguards.
The desperate, almost suicidal action was not lost on the 11th, and the cold violence became tainted with a ferocity as their focus shifted towards protecting the young prince and princess.
Something shot out from the diminishing mob trying to surge past Azula's bodyguards, a small figure that leapt over the heads of the rebels. The twisting figure aimed their curved short sword at Azula. The assassin had chosen the perfect moment; the bodyguards were entangled by spears and axes, too focused on the threats in front of them to react in time to the one that shot above them.
"Death to the Fire Nation!"
The old general in Iroh admired the decapitation strike, however suicidal it clearly was. Iroh the uncle was far more horrified when he could barely make out his niece bracing herself from the press of bodies. Judging from what he could see, Azula was doing a good job of fending for herself. Iroh caught sight of the assassin leaping away from tongues of blue fire, and their blade glinting as it was deflected.
Seconds had passed, and Azula was still standing. Her bodyguards were slowly but surely pushing the rebels back, and the 11th were slaughtering their way towards the princess.
The gambit had failed.
The old prince felt relief melt away his trepidation. However much Iroh had been left out of Azula's growth during his travels with Zuko, he knew for certain at the very least that she was a capable fighter. If the assassin couldn't land the strike with the advantage of surprise on their side, they'd have little chance in a fairer bout. Especially once the rest of the rebels were dealt with and-
A sharp explosion snapped Iroh's attention towards Xing's position, or at least the ring of knocked over soldiers and rebels surrounding where he once stood. Iroh's eyes shifted just in time to catch the young prince in the air, blasting fire at an oversized arrow that flew from a different direction from the rebel archers. Iroh's eyes went wide as the ballista bolt tumbled away, its metal shaft glowing and bent from heat.
Iroh didn't notice the arrow that followed behind it, and neither did Xing until he twisted away from it as he landed. Firebenders immediately blasted to the skies to hunt down the ballista before another bolt was launched.
With that final trap defeated (and Iroh dearly hoped it was the final trap), the fighting continued to its inevitable conclusion. Fong's soldiers and the civilian rabble were crushed. The 11th's tanks blocked the major exits, turning the ensuing rout into a desperate rush to squeeze into the alleys, turning the escape into a panicked jam.
Those insurgents who were intact enough were rounded up, and Iroh had to look away as the soldiers of the 11th wasted no time in ensuring easy containment and the sound of broken bones and agonized screams echoed down the streets.
It was only after all of that that Xing collapsed, sparking panic among the 11th as a faint cut marred his face with a sickly purple shade. The arrow he'd twisted away from had grazed him; a normally trivial wound that was clearly anything but.
"Xing? Xing!"
Iroh winced as he heard perhaps for the first time genuine panic in the voice of his usually composed niece.