The Officer and the Princess: The Flames Of War

Chapter 50

Azula felt like she was having a panic attack. Her heart was beating quicker than she could count, she was having trouble breathing, her right arm had a subtle shake to it. She used to not have this problem when she was younger. When she was in her early teen and taking part in things she shouldn't have been she was cool and calm under pressure. It might of been because she didn't particularly care for anyone besides her father...until she had met Sung. But as the years passed and she was away from him and she had to refind herself she had found people she did care about. She cared about Naito to see her friend on the ground, lifeless, to be called "filth" like he was just a piece of garbage hurt her more than she could even try to put into words.

She was alone in the so called "club house" sitting on a pillow with her legs pulled up to her chest, just trying to calm down, in the center of that sitting area her and Naito's Pai Sho game was left...forever unfinished. She focused on that board. Naito said she had been three moves away from victory. She stared at his tiles, how they were spaced out across the board, throughout their game he had slowly advanced, he had been placing his tiles in such a way as to take her out in one final swoop. But she had stopped that when she had took his wheat stalk tile.

That's when she noticed something strange. She leaned forward to look closer at the paper board. One of his Tiles had been moved at some point. She strongly doubted it had been Naito's ghost coming back to finish the game, he must have moved it when Azula had been momentarily distracted by Daichi coming in, just before it had gone wrong. He had blocked her straight shot to his center tile. But he said their was no real defense for the move she had been doing. But as she looked at the board Azula realized something, Naito didn't have any more moves he could have played...but neither did Azula...he had said there wasn't a defense he never said anything about there not being an offense. They had played to a stalemate. He hadn't won but he hadn't lost either.

In Pai Sho there were plenty of strategies that focused solely on playing the game to a stalemate. In those type of games usually one of the players would forfeit, symbolically flipping their Chief tile in surrender to a worthy opponent. "Well played." Azula said softly and sadly as she took one of her red lotus tiles and flipping it and placing down on the board forfeiting the game.

She heard two steps of feet enter the room. She had long since been able to tell who was coming just by the fall of their feet. Natio had lighter than average foot steps, even with boots on his feet falls had barely registered. That no doubt had been a skill he had picked up during his years as a Ranger sneaking behind Earth Kingdom lines , they called it Fox Stepping because of how light it was. Daichi in contrast stomped his feet when he walked, a rhythmic marching type of walk, Shào however was the easiest of all for Azula to pick up on, since she didn't wear shoes her feet slapped across the stone ground.

She was slapping now as she walked in to their little sanctuary. Her face red as she walked across and punched one of the stacked crates, she hit it over and over putting more force into it with each hit until on the third her fist went clear through the wood. "We killed him." She said as she pulled her fist back out. "We killed him." She repeated as she dropped to her knees and sobbed into her hands.

"We didn't kill him." Daichi said, coming in behind her and removing his helmet. "Kurn killed him, Genji gave his life to protect us. He's a hero."

Shào looked up at Daichi, tears rolling down her cheeks. "The world has enough hero's, I just want my friend back. Be-before I met you he was the only Fire Nation Soldier here who was nice to me. The others looked at me like I was trash." As she said that last part she pointed across at Azula. Not at her but at the wall behind her, in the direction where Colonel Genji Natio had taken his last breaths and died protecting his friends. "He didn't deserve that."