oceanicbutterfly | RL with Azula

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RL with Azula

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.

All the same, though, she had a decent idea of where Azula's room was, having worked it out in case they needed to go through with Urara's espionage plan. (She'd picked up details from various people.) The hard part had been trying to figure out how she'd get in without being caught--at best, the guards would kick her out, and at worst... well, it wasn't hard to imagine things Azula might do to her if she recognized her sneaking around.

Today, though, she intended to be noticed and recognized. Which gave her more options.

"Pretty Cure Metamorphose!"

In two very high leaps, Cure Aqua landed gracefully just inside what was probably the princess's window.

[For the record, Cinnamon brought her there.

And speaking of Cinnamon]

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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.

Azula was a logical person. She wasn't trusting or easily manipulated by any stretch of the imagination, but if she could come up with a logical reason for something, she could usually convince herself to believe it. That was why she was now going over every single interaction with Ty Lee that she could think of, and picking out every piece of evidence that supported her claim that she had just been manipulating the other girl. After all, that was certainly the most logical ~~and much less painful~~ explanation.

It was brilliant, really. She was brilliant. She had been fooling Ty Lee since they were six. Hadn't she? Of course she had.

OOC: Since you described her entrance as "graceful"- i.e., not noisy- and since she hasn't said anything so far, I'm just going to assume that Azula hasn't noticed her yet. DX

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.]

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?"

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."

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

Edited 2008-11-04 00:30 (UTC)

"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."

"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.

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.

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.

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?"

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

...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."

"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.

"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."

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

"No."

Edited 2008-11-04 15:09 (UTC)

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."

"Ty Lee is not upset," she snapped before she could stop herself. Then she let out a quiet growl. "Look, I am going to bed. I'm not going to listen to you. You can continue to talk to yourself if you so choose, but when I wake up, you will be gone- or I will make the sacrifice of a destroyed bedroom in order to destroy you."

"I hope you don't expect me to move for you," Aqua commented. "What did you say to her?"

"I do, actually." Since fire had proved ineffectual, Azula spun around and gave Karen a very hard shove onto the floor. She then slid under the sheets, piling a ridiculous amount of blankets on top of herself (despite the fact that it wasn't at all cold in the room).

Edited 2008-11-04 20:12 (UTC)

As would be expected from someone shoved hard while sitting on the side of a bed, Aqua promptly fell onto the floor, just barely throwing her arms up in time to not land on her face.

"Answer me," she said, tugging the sheets down gently.

Azula yanked them back with considerably more force. "No."

"What did you say to her?" Aqua asked, more annoyed now, as she pulled the sheets down again, a bit harder this time.

Azula tugged them back. "I'm not going to answer you, no matter how annoying you make yourself. Give. Up."

Aqua walked around to the foot of the bed and put one foot on it, pulled back the covers again, and continued gripping them using what was currently the full force of her Pretty Cure strength. "Answer me."

"No."

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