Bab 110: Chapter 110 - Ursa and Timeskip
Noren seems surprised and now that he's calmer, he looks at Zuko and Azula in a new light, recognizing Ursa's features on their faces. When Ursa had come back, and before she had abandoned her memories and face to become Noriko, her greatest regrets were towards the children she had left behind. He knows she truly loved her two children, unlike Ozai.
Still remaining vigilant, he directly asks, "What assurances can you give me that this isn't a trap to separate our family again?"
Nuwa looks at him like he's dumb and says, "We could easily take you down and kidnap her, but we are not doing so, are we?"
Unsure whether to be offended or fully relieved, Noren plops himself down on a chair of his own and says, "Fine, we'll do as you say and ask the Mother of Faces to return her memories and face. Should I start packing for the trip?"
"No," Nuwa explains, "we can bring both of you to the Mother of Faces through the Spirit Realm. Call Noriko back inside since you are reassured."
Noriko returns with Kiyi and sits down shortly after. Zuko and Azula look at her with complicated expressions and thoughts. This is their mom and she didn't recognize them. She had purposely left behind her old life and memories to live out her life in happiness with another man due to anticipating Ozai's hunt.
What Zuko and Azula do not know is that Noren's original name is Ikem, Ursa's first love and fiancee. Ozai had ripped the couple apart after hearing a prophecy that the descendent of the Fire Lord and Roku will produce an unparalleled firebender. Ursa is Roku's granddaughter, thus she was blackmailed to be his Consort in return for the safety of her parents and Ikem.
Zuko and Azula look uneasy even after coming this far seeing that their mom is happy with her life now, unlike how she was in the palace. In fact, this does upset them slightly, but they know this is Ozai's fault and they are more mature now. They won't be petty over not providing their mother with more happiness than Kiyi does, so together they half-heartedly try to convince Nuwa to leave. Mai and Nuwa resolutely deny their lovers individually. This is their mother and losing her from their lives is a source of deep regret for both of them.
Nuwa, Noren, and Noriko sit cross-legged in a triangle. After dragging both of them into the Spirit Realm, Nuwa teleports them to the Forgetful Valley, where the Mother of Faces lives. Seeing the hulking Spirit again, Nuwa is once again reminded that although she may be powerful when it comes to the Mortal Realm, the Spirit Realm has plenty of powerhouses.
Furthermore, in other Records, she's sure that powerful individuals will be everywhere. She resolves to lower her footprint when possible in the future. After Ba Sing Se, she became reckless and used multi-elemental bending in plain sight of everyone even after she took off her disguise.
The Mother of Faces turns to where they teleported in from and says, "Welcome, Outsider. Thank you for preserving the blood of the dragons."
Nuwa's eye twitches, but she maintains her composure otherwise. She lets go of the hands of Noren and Noriko and pushes them slightly forward while saying, "Do me a favor and return Noriko to normal from before she met you."
Lowering her massive head down to their level, the Mother of Faces says, "Ah yes, the unfortunate story of the pauper and the beautiful Consort who wanted to start anew with him. Very well Outsider, you deserve this much for what you've done on behalf of balance."
The Mother of Faces wraps two of her massive tree-like hands around Noriko's face as one of the faces floating around the Ancient Spirit drifts downwards to merge into her target while Noriko's face floats back into an orbit around the Ancient Spirit. The tree hands glow white for a minute indicating the process of the Mother of Faces returning Ursa's memories.
Once the tree hands are detracted, Nuwa says, "Thanks, I'll see you around."
The Mother of Faces hums and says, "See you." Then she mutters to herself, "Indeed, humans are always in a hurry with the short time they have to live.."
Nuwa grabs both of her in-laws and returns them to the Mortal Realm. Opening her eyes and seeing Zuko and Azula's anxious faces, Nuwa nods with assurance. Ursa is still out of it, probably digesting her new memories as Noriko, while Noren opens his eyes in surprise at how quick and easy that was. It beats going all the way to the Forgetful Valley on foot at least. Ursa's face slowly changes as her mortal shell adapts to the change of her spiritual form's face. Kiyi looks scared and mad for a moment, but Noren calms her down.
Kiyi is the main reason that neither he nor Nuwa asked his face to be changed back to what it was originally. She's already old enough to remember faces and she might experience some trauma if both her parents were 'replaced' by different people that acted like them.
Ursa's face slowly forms a frown as she remembers leaving her children behind. Then begins crying with her eyes still shut as she sees Zuko and Azula looking much more mature showing up on Noriko's doorstep. Especially Azula, she couldn't see any of the cruelty that she was known for as a teenager on her face any more. Ursa slowly opens her teary eyes and pounces on Zuko and Azula for a big hug. "Oh, my babies! I'm so sorry! I've been a bad mother. I left and then I forgot both of you.. I've let you both down!"
Zuko and Azula are both dumbfounded and misty eyed. They fully understand her plight. Zuko rubs her back and says, "Mom, we understand. Don't worry, we put dad in jail. I'm the Fire Lord now!"
Ursa's eyes light up in fanatical glee. "Yes! Finally!" Then she sees Azula and her eyes fill with guilt again as she hugs her tighter. "Baby, I'm so sorry for leaving without saying a word. I always loved you, but I had to stop myself from expressing it or else I feared your father would bully you just as he bullied Zuko. Azula.. I owe you a lifetime's worth of a mother's love.."
Azula also begins to have tears drop from her eyes. She finally understands why she wasn't shown as much attention or love as Zuko was. It was for her protection. Zuko was already a target of Ozai's hate and Ursa didn't want Azula to be as well. Nevertheless, Azula needs more emotional proof that Ursa loves her for her own mind to undo years of believing that her mom didn't love her. She needs to spend a lot of time with her mom going forward.
Zuko hesitantly asks, "Mom, will you come back to Capital City with me? I'll keep all of you safe and together, I promise."
Ursa looks at Noren with a pleading expression on her face, to which Noren has no choice but to sigh and nod his head. The group hears baby cries and checks their respective babies, only to see Kiyi crying at the disappearance of Noriko. Ursa reaches out to her, but Kiyi pulls away deeper into her father's arms. Nuwa pats Ursa shoulder and says, "She'll come to understand. It'll take some time."
Feeling slightly depressed, Ursa quickly recovers as she sees Izumi and Tulen in Mai and Nuwa's arms. She holds her head down to them and happily peppers the faces of her grandchildren with kisses. Izumi starts crying, but Tulen doesn't mind. In the end, everyone gets to hear Izumi's melodious crying, so they're all happy.
Noren, Ursa, Mai, and Kiyi head off to Capital City by animal carriage that night. Appa is unavailable since Aang and him went on a quick trip for updates about the chaos following the Comet from the colonies. Mai will be enough to keep them safe. Nuwa, Azula, Zuko, and the two babies are shuttled back by fire thrusters late in the night. They have to go back early since they have important things to do like taking care of the babies, meditating, and miscellaneous Fire Lord business. In the meantime, Nuwa gives Zuko the sunstone, because she suspects he can make a breakthrough now that Ursa will be back.
+75k LEE, Total: 3593k LEE
Two days later, the carriage makes it to Capital City. Ursa exits the carriage with slightly trembling steps. This City was always a nightmarish place for her since it's where she suffered all that time under Ozai's thumb. She kept mementos of her time in Hira'a just to escape from this City even if only in her thoughts. Mai brought her straight to the palace where Zuko, Azula, and Nuwa joined her in the carriage and redirected it to go to the prison to see Ozai.
Zuko and Azula came up with this plan to reassure their mother that Ozai was well and truly gone. The carriage pulls up to the prison and the gang enters the prison proper where Ozai was locked up in a normal looking cell without any restraints. It's their first visit to him.
When Ozai sees Ursa, he seethes with rage. "You bitch! How did you avoid my underlings for so long? Have you forgotten that-" he bangs the bars of the cell and pushes his face up against them "-YOU ARE MINE?! I OWN YOU! And you two treacherous unfilial bastards!"
He points at Zuko and Azula, while Ursa takes several steps back in fear. "There's no way you can run this Nation without me. Do you think the Earth King will let those Fire Nation colonies be without a fight? He has to reclaim them for the sake of his honor! Without me, you are all doomed! There is no end to war until the enemy is entirely wiped out, FOOLS!"
Ozai breathes heavily while Ursa's fear recedes gradually as she realizes the context of the situation. Her wretched former husband is currently behaving like a ranting madman with his entirely disheveled hair within his smelly cell. If he had firebending, he should have already attacked them with how mad he was, but he hadn't. Azula confirms to her shortly after, "Aang, the Avatar, removed Ozai's ability to firebend."
Ursa looks down upon Ozai as he slumps to the ground onto his knees hearing the reminder of his own pitiful weakness. It's only now that she realizes that he is a small pitiful excuse for a man. Shaking her head, she looks down on him one last time. Then, she says, "Goodbye, Ozai" with every intention for this to be the last time they ever meet. As she turns around, she has a bright spark of hope in her eyes as she looks in the direction of Capital City. This is her son's City!
Ozai shouts at them as they leave, "Hey, stop! Don't you turn your back on me! Come back and grovel before me! Do you hear me? Come back and grovel!"
The mood improves as the rest of the gang picks up on Ursa's change of heart. Zuko is smiling wide like a doofus. Mai pinches his waist to show some decorum, but he just picks her up and twirls her around in front of all the prison guards. They look at each other curiously, then give a few cheers and catcalls, at least until Azula glares at them.
She is actually quite excited to get to know her mother properly this time around. There's no way she is going to be as open about her feelings as Zuko though. That'd be embarrassing.
[5 months later]
+5717k LEE, Total: 9310k LEE
Time trudged onwards as Nuwa began meditating for four hours a day after every sex session. This made it so that Nuwa, Azula, and Tulen all had to go to bed early, but everyone's sleep schedules were messed up anyway due to the addition of the babies to the palace, now including Kiyi as the eldest, even though she was technically an aunty to the other babies.
Nuwa did not do much work during this time other than a bit of accounting and planning for the Pea family's business interests in Republic City. She wasn't going to get too involved in politics or business since she felt that meditation and taking care of Tulen took too much time out of her day.
Tulen learned to recognize Nuwa and Azula's faces at around 3 months of age and started babbling incessantly at 5 months. He's much clingier when he's awake since he always wants to be looking at either Nuwa or Azula. The two grey cartilaginous horns on his forehead also began protruding, but his scales didn't go anywhere. His skin seemed to be darkening slowly to match Nuwa's bronze color. Nuwa's heart slowly started to crack after spending so much time taking care of him and seeing the cutie smile and laugh. Occasionally, during her meditations, she would recall playing with him alongside Azula and her synchronization would dial up a notch.
[Bisected Dao Core of Sex] - synchronization +14%, Total: 20%
Nothing changed with regards to her power level though, so she continued with her meditation and waited for it to bear fruit.
Dan and Ty Li had begun building a house in the outskirts of the City. They wanted to live together and enjoy their otaku lives off the money that Dan had made stealing from the corrupt nobles.
The Peaknights became the highest ranking Royal Guards, but they'd spend most of their time in the workshop with the Mechanist feeding him designs to create. With each new product that they contribute to the Mechanist, which goes into the Pea family businesses set up in Capital City and the Fire Nation colonies, Nuwa sends them nudes of their favorite girls.
She doesn't send overly racy nudes like full-on creampie ones, but the ones she sends show more than enough skin for them to get off. They're mostly nudes of Ty Li, Azula, Mai, and herself. Of course, none of the other girls know about this arrangement, but even if they did, the Peaknights have already seen them in that hot spring orgy before, so they wouldn't consider it a big deal. The internet is still a foreign concept to them.
Zuko unblocks his Heart chakra after spending so much time among the company of Ursa, Mai, and Izumi. He returned the sunstone, which helped him understand how life contributes to firebending, to Nuwa since it allows tracking of Tulen. Zuko's finally at the enlightened level of power. It's not enough to face the old-timers in the Order of the White Lotus, but he'd be able to stand his ground against a group of benders or an ambush.
Azula slowly gained some more familiarity with her Phoenix fire and started exploring the concepts of destruction and reconstruction involved in it. She was able to use it more precisely and with faster speed. When she was free, she would spend time with her mother feeding ducks and talking about her adventures with Nuwa.
Nuwa managed to convince June to accept the designation of her maid and Aiwei was happy to become her butler. Aiwei did most of the maid and butlering duties though, since June only lazed around and served as a bodyguard to Tulen and the other babies. She only changed Izumi's diaper once before never doing it again, much to Aiwei's chagrin.
Sokka, Yue, Katara, Aang, and baby Bumi had taken Appa to help rebuild the Southern Water Tribe with Hakoda, Sokka and Katara's dad, after putting Yon Rha, the killer of Katara's mother, in jail for excessive brutality.
Iroh returned from his travels fruitless with regards to finding more dragons. He did discover that almost all Zata mercenaries deployed in the colonies were murdered mysteriously. He also found downed airships with blood essence condensation facilities. The airships had holes in them approximately the size of the creature, whom he later discovered is Lord Zata. The tentative theory is that Lord Zata took all the blood essence and murdered all his cronies to silence them for good to prevent investigators from finding clues about how to create more dragonified humans before he came to kill Nuwa. No one had known how he knew that Nuwa was responsible for the events leading up to the invasion though. Even among the top-level personnel, the fact that Stella is Nuwa wasn't well known.
Iroh also explained that the Earth Kingdom, Ba Sing Se in particular, is thriving with all the corrupt nobles out of power, but they got a bit too excited about the victory over the Fire Nation. Their military morale is sky high and there's an overwhelming sentiment among the citizens to retake the Fire Nation colonies instead of allowing the United Republic of Nations to form on what was the Earth Kingdom's land before the Fire Nation invasion just as Ozai had said.
The gang had all been in Capital City too long it seems. Still, there was a reason they were there. Toph, the one girl who would be able to pacify the hearts of the Earth Kingdom citizens easiest, was about to give birth!
(A/N: I'm not a big fan of the Ursa arc in the comics, so I skimmed through it. Please forgib.)
(A/N: https://discord.gg/VD3C2BFPAu)
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