Miyuki woke to the smell of food that was indescribably off before making her way downstairs to confirm what she thought it was. As expected, she found her brother sitting by the fire with some papers in hand. "Good morning, Miyu. I made some breakfast if you'd like."
She took a seat across from him and glanced at the seaweed stew that would apparently be sweet, if the sugar sitting by her brother was any indication. Typical Izuki. "I don't have much of an appetite, but thanks Izuki. What are you reading? Work?"
He nodded. "More or less. It's the meeting minutes from the council's debate after your hearing. Master Pakku was wrong to demand a hearing with the Council like that, especially in that manner. You can rest assured that they will be hearing about it from me."
"I appreciate it, thank you."
He set the papers down then, his expression serious as his posture shifted ever so slightly to match the formal mood. "Miyuki, for the sake of it, I need to ask- what you told the Council last night, is it true? The whole truth?"
She hesitated. She didn't like lying to her brother. She could hardly get away with it, and he would never say that he knew that she was lying. Instead, he would just sit there, disappointed in himself for letting her become the sort of person who could lie point blank.
She adjusted her own posture to match his before giving him her reply. "Yes and no."
He raised an eyebrow at her inquisitively, and she continued, "Everything I said last night is true. There are a few personal details that I omitted, admittedly, but I can assure you that those details have nothing to do with the Tribe, the Council, or their ability to prepare for this situation."
Her brother folded his arms and hummed, his gaze drifting to the fire as he thought for a long moment. "Alright. I understand. There's no need for you to disclose personal details when it has nothing to do with keeping the Tribe safe, so I won't ask you anything more in this capacity." He picked up a bowl and poured himself a portion of the stew, posture now relaxed once again.
The papers lay on the floor, scattered and abandoned. It hardly looked as though she had tidied the room up just the day before. She loved her brother, truly, but the only things that were ever neat about him were his appearance and his fighting.
She wasn't sure how he drank the (sweet) seaweed stew without a change in his expression, but he did it. "The Council is spending far too much time bickering amongst themselves and deliberating what they should do with your information."
"Predictable." Miyuki sighed despite herself. "They don't trust me nearly as much as you do, Izuki. As a matter of fact, they hardly trust me at all."
"That too, is to be expected. Not necessarily justified, mind you, but expected." He finished his soup and stood, a hand reaching down to ruffle her hair as he placed the bowl aside to clean later. "Well, it's time for me to go to work, but I'll be home for dinner. Have a nice day, Miyu."
He'd hardly thought anything of patting her head, but it gave her a pause. It was something she hadn't realized that she missed. She smiled at him and waved. "Thanks, you too, Izuki."
·:*¨༺ ★ ༻¨*:·.
Miyuki hummed at the sight of the lone girl in the waterbending class. "And the plot thickens." She could feel the smirk tugging at the corners of her lips despite the vague sense of resentment building up in her. She had fought for years to learn bending from the master, but he never budged. What about this girl exactly made him change his policy?
"Miyuki, I can practically feel you sneering from back there. Would you care to join us in sparring?" the elderly master called out.
She leapt down from the ledge and used a wave to slow her ascent and bring her to a graceful landing. "Oh? I would be more than happy to, if you'd allow it." Miyuki watched as Pakku asked his class if there were any takers. Ideally, she would go straight into sparring with the elderly waterbending master and get the jump on him, but she wouldn't particularly mind a warm-up.
She stretched her arms and shook out her wrists when a boy stood and the rest cleared out of the way to observe. Judging by his form, he was an older student. He had decent overall control, but unskilled fine control. Sending a large attack back to him like another wave would be all too easy for him to deflect. If she was guessing correctly, sending multiple, small moving parts at him all at once would be the way to proceed. She decided to give it a trial run.
She formed a block of ice and began to send sheets of it flying at him from different angles. He resorted to dodging rather than taking control of them. In other words, she was on the dot. Time to amp things up. One by one in rapid succession, she sent blunted icicles raining down on him, watching as he dodged. Miyuki slowly took out the number of potential future actions until he was completely trapped. Admittedly, she could have achieved the same end result with a carefully arranged rain of icicles all at once, but this was just a warm-up, and sending them one by one was far more interesting than ending things in one fell swoop.
"Give, give! I give!" the boy exclaimed.
Miyuki smiled innocently and freed him.
Pakku folded his arms from the chair of his making. "You're quite skilled."
She put a polite smile on her face. "I'm honored to hear that you think so."
"Then, let me put you against my star pupil, Katara."
Ah, the girl. He was doing this on purpose to rile her up.
Miyuki took a slow inhale and calmed herself. "Of course." She had an inkling that she would not face off against Pakku. Not today. It would be unwise to reveal all the tricks up her sleeve then when she could save them for another fight.
Miyuki took in the girl opposing her on the field as she prepared herself to fight. The girl was younger than her, smaller than her, less experienced than her, but evidently, a quick study. Her first attack was direct, straightforward. She was the direct, headstrong type then. Miyuki caught it and sent it back to test the girl's control. Overall control was fine. Next attack. Fine control was passable. Reaction time was decent.
Miyuki hummed to herself. Katara used their surroundings well. Her actions, however, were standard. It was time to stop playing what was essentially catch with the girl and start going on the offensive. She'd make it showy for fun.
Miyuki kept her expression placid as she closed the distance with a series of backflips and cartwheels, ensuring that she took the distance by sending waves of water that crashed into volleys of ice each time she was on the descent. Her opponent was decent, she would give her that much, but Miyuki had timed the girl's reactions with the sheets of ice much like she had the first boy. This girl would be left only with the option to dodge when faced with a flurry of attacks like this, especially in a form that she had never seen before.
Miyuki lunged at the girl only to fall into a crouch as her opponent tried to hit her back with a water whip. Miyuki regained her area of control as swung her leg out in a kick, knocked Katara down, and got back on her feet by the end of the full circle. She flew into a roundhouse kick without pause. Every movement Miyuki took, she backed with waterbending, and every attack started to hit until she had the girl incapacitated in a block of ice. The whole thing was disappointing.
Katara glared up at her, but Miyuki hardly even glanced at the girl in return. It was possible that she went a little too hard for a spar in retrospect, but a quick glance in the direction of the students who were observing confirmed that hardly anyone had noticed. No witnesses, no crime. Miyuki was in the clear then.
When she was sparring with Lieutenant Jee and the others, she was told that chains of her uninterrupted attacks looked more like dancing than fighting, especially when she began to use trails of ice to speed her movement up. It seemed that the show she put on just now left the same sort of impression now.
Miyuki put a smile back on her face that didn't reach her eyes. "I would love to stay and spar some more, but I'm afraid that I'm spoken to for the remainder of today." She turned to the waterbending master, eyes cold. "Thank you for letting me take part." With that, she glided to the stairs and made her way back to where she had been observing.
"Early start to your morning, Miyu?" The voice that cut in was unexpected. There were only two people in the entire city that called her that, and this voice wasn't her brother's.
She turned around and found herself looking into the face of her good friend. Her only friend. He looked taller than she remembered- sturdier- and his dark hair, which he had always kept cropped short, was tied back into a neat bun.
She grinned at the young man. "How could I not after receiving an invitation from Master Pakku himself?"
He laughed just as easily as she remembered he did and it brought a long missed warmth to her heart. "You know, somehow, you manage to make his title sound sarcastic every time."
She hummed lightly. "Do I, now? How strange." Despite the nonchalance in her voice, she found the tidbit endlessly amusing, and she had to resist snickering right then and there.
He laughed again and clapped her back. "Anyway, I brought you some books and food. I'm sure you're not in the mood to be seeing tons of people in the market after what happened yesterday with the Council, so I figured I'd save you the trip. And from Izuki's habit of mixing condiments up."
"I appreciate it, Kyo, thanks. Though, I'm surprised you knew that I'd be looking for books."
The grin that he flashed at her was bright and easy, and for a moment, it felt as though she had never even left to begin with. "Would you even be Miyu anymore if you weren't?"
A faint smile tugged at her lips. "Fair enough." She glanced at him as they started to walk. "Have you eaten yet?"
He grinned. "I was hoping you'd offer."
She snorted at him and rolled her eyes.
"It's good to see you again, Miyu."
"You too, Kyo."
·:*¨༺ ★ ༻¨*:·.
After their meal, Kyo left for work and she wandered the streets for a bit and collected some information on the girl from earlier, Katara. A Southern Tribe girl who arrived with the Avatar. Fought her way into Pakku's class, etc. etc. Miyuki had already more or less guessed or known those things. She never skipped the groundwork when it came to her job, and Zuko's request was no different. She knew a bit about all the members of the Avatar's travel crew. What surprised her, however, was the fact that this girl's grandmother was meant to be married to Pakku. It was no wonder that he had decided to give this particular girl an exception then.
Ruffled, but generally satisfied with her findings, Miyuki was on her way home after several hours of subtly planting the rumor here and there around when she ran into an irritatingly familiar face.
The young man grinned at her. "Well, well, well. If it isn't Miyuki. Second day back, and you've already been summoned to the Council and gotten into a fight. I'll give you one thing, you're a busy person."
She flashed a bright smile in his direction. "Hahn. Just the person I was hoping to never see again."
"You've heard of my engagement to Princess Yue, of course?" he declared almost smugly.
She made an effort to keep her expression completely placid as she bit back the most obvious of scathing retorts. She waved her hand dismissively. "Onwards and upwards, so they say." She had half the mind to throw him off the bridge and into the water, but that would only land her in more trouble. It was hardly worth it.
"And I assume you're at rock bottom, as they say."
She looked him up and down before deciding on her reply to his weak retort. "All the less room to fall." She smirked at him. "Haven't you heard? I'm a renowned informant now. It'd be quite the shame if I found something that needed to be reported to the Council."
Her subtext was straining to the surface, but he was never the sharpest sword in the bunch and she wanted it to be perfectly clear what she was going for.
The smug expression melted right off his face and he paled. That was telling. Very telling. So there was something to dig up and report then. Good to know.
He casted what she assumed was meant to be a hard look in her direction. "You wouldn't."
"I'll tell you what I told you last time, Hahn- Wanna bet on it?" She smiled brightly. "Well, I have plenty of other, more important, things to attend to, so." She walked around him and continued on her way before he could do anything more. For someone who caused a big enough scene that she ended up needing to leave the Tribe, it was surprisingly docile interaction.
Miyuki returned to her home after picking up something to eat for lunch where she found one of her messenger hawks circling. Digging up the dirt on Hahn and plotting a way to plant the seeds that the old waterbending master was playing a game of favorites as opposed to assessing true talent could wait until later.
She went inside to get her chap before retrieving the bird. She tossed the hawk a hunk of meat from her lunch before putting the rest of the ingredients into a pot to cook. She settled by the cooking fire and opened the letter with one hand, absentmindedly stirring the stew by bending with the other.
She chuckled a little when she realized that it was from Zuko.
According to the crew, we're about a day away from the Northern Tribe. If all goes according to plan, I'll see you at the meeting spot at the right time. I'm not sure why Uncle wanted me to write this to you, but, here it is. I guess. Things are less interesting without you around. █ ████ ███ █ ███████ █ ██████ See you soon.
She had to stop herself from laughing too loudly at the message. Ah, Zuko, ever eloquent. She could practically hear the letter in his voice.
She hesitated to destroy something so amusing, but the contents spoke of their plans too, and it would be foolish to get caught over something like this. She carefully ripped out the portion regarding their plans and tossed it into the fire before stowing the other part away. She wondered what was written under the ink blots he had created, but she doubted that there was a way to find that out.
She produced a fresh sheet of paper and started to write. Her stew could afford to wait long enough for that.
I'll be waiting for your arrival. I'm sure that your uncle has his reasons. I won't guess at them here, but one thing is for sure- whatever his reasons are, he had your best interests in mind.
I fought that 'peasant girl' today and I have some thoughts that I think you'll agree with, but we can talk about that another time. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
It had been a while since she wrote something that wasn't in code. It was a strange feeling. She resumed stirring her stew and while she waited for the hawk to finish eating its reward and rest. She had her lunch, and by the time she was finished cleaning, the hawk looked ready to go again. She attached the letter to the hawk and brought it outside.
It wouldn't be too long now.
Extra:
Miyuki sat by the window while she waited for the stew she made to finish boiling. Her brother was reading through reports on the other side of the room and she had set up a row of pai sho pieces on the table in a long, twisting procession.
"Hey, did you hear about Master Pakku?" she heard a woman say from outside, "He only let that Southern Tribe girl become his student because he fell in love with that girl's grandmother."
"I didn't! I did hear something about that boy Hahn though. The one who's set to marry Princess Yue?"
"No way! Spill!"
Miyuki smiled to herself, knocked the first pai sho piece down and watched as they all toppled over until the last piece fell off the table and onto the ground.
She heard her brother chuckle from the other side of the room, and she let her gaze flicker from the piece on the ground to her brother. "How sinister. Should I be concerned?" The corners of his lips were pulled up ever so slightly into an amused smile despite his words of concern.
She smiled back at him, guilt free. "Not at all. It's not a crime to spread information that isn't slander, right?"
He nodded firmly, a smile still playing at his lips as his eyes flickered back to the documents he had in hand. "A crime it is not."