RL with Azula

[bluespring]

Karen had only seen bits and pieces of the Fire Nation royal palace before. On both of her previous trips here, she'd been too preoccupied with saving Azula to make note of much that wasn't immediately important. And she only really remembered the first one, anyway

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[peoplesprincess]

Azula was meditating. Well, sort of. She did regular breathing exercises to help enhance her firebending, but on occasion she also used them to focus herself. Though really, it's always a bit hard to perform a deep-breathing technique when one is lying face-down on their bed. She had tried doing it sitting up, cross-legged, but she had kept catching sight of herself in the full-length mirror across the room- more specifically, she had kept catching sight of her slightly red and puffy eyes, which really defeated the purpose of this entire exercise. She had contemplated just breaking the mirror, but that would have been childish

[bluespring]

Aqua glanced around. "You really do have a nice view from... your..." She trailed off as she saw Azula on her bed. That was a position Karen knew well... she'd been there herself with some frequency over the years. Never when there was anyone to see her (not even Jiiya, though he'd probably seen anyway when she was younger), but nevertheless it was familiar. Seeing the princess like that, it was obvious she really was upset, as Karen had thought... but at the same time, it was about the last thing she'd expected to actually see. It was a little unsettling, actually.

"Azula?"

[Well, she would have made a sound like a footstep, probably, but it'd be easy to miss if she wasn't paying attention.]

[peoplesprincess]

At the sound of Karen's voice, Azula immediately came out of her reverie and jerked upright. In the space of a second or two, her expression turned from slightly disoriented confusion, to instinctive anger, to indignation- and then to a cool, calculated glare. When she spoke, her tone perfectly matched the last expression.

"What are you doing here?"

[bluespring]

Now that was the Azula Karen knew... sort of. The expression was right, but her eyes looked like she'd been crying.

"I'm listening to you," Aqua said as she walked towards the bed, "as you tell me what's really going on."

[peoplesprincess]

Azula stood up, blocking her from coming any closer. "No. You are leaving, now."

[bluespring]

"Only if you're going somewhere." Aqua had fully expected this response. Well, the verbal part, anyway. She hadn't expected Azula to suddenly stand right in front of her. "There's no way you're fine like you say you are. Look, you've been crying."

[peoplesprincess]

"I haven't." All right, so maybe she had. Just a little bit. But she had a very good, completely logical reason that she just hadn't figured out yet.

Suddenly, without any warning, Azula whipped her hand out and sent a jet of concentrated blue flame directly at Karen's face. She didn't really expect it to do much, if anything (the girl had always been confident in her fighting abilities, and she hardly seemed the type to be delusional), but Azula wanted to make her opinion of Karen's intentions clear.

[bluespring]

Aqua'd been expecting that, too, although she'd really been expecting to have some warning first. She put up a hand to block the flame, with only a bit getting through--it wasn't as if it was likely to harm her (which it didn't), but somehow having fire on one's face seemed likely to hurt. She almost, but not quite, managed to make it look completely casual.

"Liar," she said.

[peoplesprincess]

Azula frowned. "Waterbender," she spat out, clearly meaning it as an insult.

In a full-on fight, she was quite confident that she would be able to beat Karen, or at least hold her own. However, she was not about to destroy her bedroom. Besides, that was probably what Karen wanted. Why else would she have come here and tried to antagonize her? Azula wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. She would just ignore her.

Turning around, Azula walked around to the other side of the bed and sat down, her back to Karen. Conjuring up a small flame, she held her hand out in front of her, so that it would be visible to the other girl as a warning of what would happen if she tried to come closer.

[bluespring]

Aqua shrugged at the "insult," and sat down on the other other side of the bed. The near side of the bed. The... look, they're back to back, okay?

"So, what were you fighting about?"

[peoplesprincess]

Without turning around (and without answering) Azula shot another stream of fire at her.

[bluespring]

...Karen hadn't expected that. Probably should have, though. Azula had managed to hit her exposed shoulder, too. Aqua grit her teeth and managed not to cry out.

"You shouldn't do that. If you missed, you might set the bed on fire."

[peoplesprincess]

"I can control it. I wouldn't allow that to happen." She neglected to mention that in a full-on fight, she wouldn't have time to prevent things in the room from being destroyed. Better to let Karen think that she would be willing to go that far.

[bluespring]

"There's no reason, anyway." She did wonder exactly what Azula expected to accomplish. That demonstration earlier should have made it clear that fire wasn't going to hurt her or scare her off.

Karen turned around partly, so she could see the princess. "Let's talk."

[peoplesprincess]

Azula gave her an almost disbelieving look. Talk? She didn't really expect her to agree to that, did she?

"No."

[bluespring]

Karen had found that, when dealing with Azula, the easiest way to make progress was to pretend "no" meant "you first."

"Ty Lee's really upset. There's no reason she'd ever willingly go back to Akako-san otherwise."