Roughly half the palace came running, and proceeded to be absolutely useless and in the way until Song forced her way through and took charge, directing some guards to keep people back while she tried to ascertain the damage done.

The explosion had come from inside the study, blasting Zuko, the door, and a pile of debris across the hallway. The Firelord was unconscious under the rubble.  Song carefully began to pick through the wreckage, sending one page off for Doctor Chang in the meantime.

Careful not to move her fiancé (no matter how unofficial it actually was), Song began to clean and bandage his wounds.  He was much less hurt that he would have been had he been even half a foot closer to the source of the explosion.  Most worrisome was the bloody, rapidly swelling lump on the back of his head.

Kouji came running up, his silver eyes wide in horror.  "Oh, no… Zuko!"

Chang was hot on his heels, along with a pair of guards carrying a stretcher.  Together, the two doctors got the unconscious Firelord on the mat and had him whisked to the infirmary, leaving Iroh and Zuko's guards to pick through the mess of the study, while Kouji was sent along to postpone every meeting indefinitely.

The bomb itself was their primary objective—the guards posted along that hallway all swore up and down that no one had been near the study save Zuko himself in at least six hours.  In the middle of all the activity, Haru returned from his latest excursion to the earth kingdom.  "Koh's legs," he breathed.

"No kidding," Ty Lee agreed.

"How's Sparky doing?"

"Still out."

"Do they know how it got there yet?"

She shook her head. "That's what they can't figure. Well, that, and how it managed to take so long to go off.

"Take me there?" Haru asked her.

"To Zuzu or the study?"

"I'll do more good at the study," Haru replied.  "What am I going to do in the infirmary besides get in the way?"

"Okay." She took his hand and led him to what was left of Zuko's study.

Haru stopped outside the door and fell into what some of the jokers around the palace were starting to call the Scrying Stance; after a moment, his green eyes snapped open and he slipped inside, making his way to Zuko's utterly destroyed desk.

Ty Lee followed, picking her way carefully across the debris-strewn floor.

"Stay back," he cautioned her.

"Nuh-uh," she objected.  "If this goes unstable, you need someone to pull you back."

"Ty Lee, I found it," Haru said.

She froze.  "The bomb?"

"Yes."  He was very carefully pulling pieces of wood aside.  "Send someone for the general."

"Okay." She picked her way over to the door, stuck her head out, and sent one of the guards running.  By the time the General turned up, the remains of the explosive had been cleared of debris.

"Can you tell anything about it?" the old man asked.

"Other than it being a bomb?"  Haru sighed.  "Not a damn thing."

"We need to get it to a safer room," Iroh instructed, and Haru nodded. 

"Makes sense."

They managed to carry it to a small, stone, not-structurally-vital room on the edge of the palace without accidentally setting it off again. By this time, Toph had joined them.  "…I need someone to help me write a letter," she said.  "Teo might be able to help us with this."

"I'll do it," Haru volunteered.

"Thanks," the younger earthbender said.

The young man nodded and ran a hand through his hair.  "Were there any new hires while I was gone?" he asked.  "Servants, aides?"

"One aide, kid named Kouji," Toph replied.

Haru blinked.  "…a kid?"

"Yeah. He's like a year younger than I am."

"What's a kid doing being a— never mind, I don't want to — yes, I do want to know.  How does a twelve-year-old get to be an aide?"

"He was handling some jerkface noble's social schedule, and totally miserable, and Zuzu was in like seven places at once, so me and Song convinced him to offer Kouji a job," Ty Lee explained.

"Huh."  He frowned.  "Where'd he come from?"

"One of the colonies. Iroh knows which specifically," was Ty Lee's answer.

Haru stiffened slightly, and was silent for a long moment.

"He didn't put together this bomb," Toph said, quietly. "First of all, he wouldn't know how. Second of all, he adores Sparky."

"…granted," Haru said, sighing.  "I think all this chasing after the Dai Li has made me paranoid,"

"Yeah," Toph said.

"Let's go write that letter."

*          *          *

Teo arrived in under a week; an airship had been sent to pick him up from the Northern Air Temple.  "Teo!" Ty Lee ran out to greet him. Despite how little time they'd spent together, they'd become fast friends after the last battle, and exchanged frequent letters.

The younger boy laughed and reached up to hug her.  "Hey, Ty Lee.  Toph said you guys had something interesting for me?"

"Yeah. Come on, I'll take you to it." She started leading him into and through the palace. "How're things?"

"Pretty quiet.  Disturbingly so, in fact, given my dad's latest project."  He flinched.  "I wish he'd never found black water."

"…Oh, right. Um. Well…we were hoping you could help with…well, it's kinda a long story." Suddenly, asking Teo to investigate more explosions sounded a little like overloading the young man.

"I've got time."

"Well, a week ago, someone planted a bomb in Zuzu's study."

Teo let go of the wheels on his chair, though the chair itself kept moving.  "What?"

"Someone planted a bomb in Zuzu's study," Ty Lee repeated. "His desk, actually. And then it was at least six hours before it went off."

"…I think I see where the problem is," the teenager said.  "Do you know what was in it?"

"We think blasting jelly. But we're not sure."

"Is there any way it could have been triggered by him opening the door?"

She shook her head. "He was in and out of there at least twice during those six hours."

"Okay, then we can rule a malfunction in the firing mechanism out."

"I…guess?"

"I'll figure it out, don't worry."  He grinned at her.

She grinned back. "'Course you will."

Then they were at the room, and Teo wheeled over to the table that had been set up for him.  He got to work right away, shutting everything else out.  Ty Lee hung around, to be a sounding board if he needed one, and to remind him to eat and sleep when it became necessary. Hopefully he'd listen better than Zuko did.

Teo made use of her quickly enough, explaining what he was doing to her in a manner she could understand — and after a few hours, he had a list of ingredients.

"So, what does that tell us?" she asked.

"That whoever made this knew what they were doing.  And probably makes explosives for a living.  Or maybe as a hobby, it's hard to tell."  Teo doodled on a bit of parchment as he talked.

Ty Lee made a face. "Anything about how it took so long to go off?"

"Working on it."

"Okay."

Finally, almost two days later, Teo sighed.  "I think I've got it."

"Yeah?"

The following explanation was full of long words and terms Ty Lee didn't understand.

"So, um, the short, small-words version would be…it was on a timer?" she said, after nearly ten minutes of trying to puzzle out what he'd meant.

Teo paused.  "…yes."

"Okay, then."

The boy pushed some wayward hair from his eyes and sighed.  "Let's go tell General Iroh."

"Good idea," she said. "Then maybe we can go see Zuzu, I think they're letting him out of the infirmary today."

"That'd be great!" said Teo, lighting up.

Ty Lee grinned in response, then led him to the General's office.

Once there, Teo started his report, stopped, glanced at Ty Lee, then sheepishly said, "It was on a timer."

Iroh nodded. "Do you know how long it was set for?"

"No.  The mechanism itself was all but destroyed; I could try to re-build it, but it would take… a very long time."

"Can you give us any type of ballpark more specific than at least six hours before it exploded?"

"Give me a day and I probably could," said the boy confidently.

"All right. Thank you."

"My pleasure, General," said Teo, bowing awkwardly in his chair.

The old man smiled, and bowed back, then returned to his weather reports.

From there, Ty Lee took Teo to see Zuko.

Zuko was just coming out of the infirmary—his ribs were still taped up and there were other bruises and indications of the explosion, but he was on his feet. "Hey, Teo."

"Zuko!" cried the younger man in delight, wheeling over to give Zuko a gentle around the waist.

"How's it going?" he asked, hugging back somewhat awkwardly and painfully.

"Pretty good, actually," Teo replied.  "Just figured a bunch of stuff out."

"Oh?" 

Teo passed on everything that he'd learned to Zuko — including one thing he'd kept from Iroh for the time being: the presence of black water in the explosive.  "There's maybe two known sources of black water right now," he finished.  "Both in the Earth Kingdom."

"…Great." It all keeps coming back to the Dai Li.

Teo was oblivious to his thoughts.  "Should make it easier to track down who did this."

"Mmhmm," Zuko said absently.

The younger boy glanced over at him.  "Everything okay, Zu?"

"Yeah, fine."

"You seem kinda… I dunno.  Out."

There was a long pause, and Teo watched him worriedly.

After a few more seconds, Zuko jerked himself out of whatever reverie he'd fallen into. "Sorry about that, thoughts ran away from me for a second."

"More than a second.  Anyway, that's everything I've found so far."

"Keep me posted?"

"Glad to."

Zuko almost-smiled at him. "Thanks, I appreciate it."

*          *          *

Haru waited until right before the General went off-duty to speak to him.  The less people around to overhear this, the better.

"What is it?" the old man asked him.

"It's about that kid," was the quiet reply.  "Whatsisname, Kouji."

"What about him?"

"What colony is he from?" Haru asked.

"New Sozin.  Why do you ask?"

The earthbender glanced at the ceiling.  "No reason."

This earned him a sceptical look, and Haru coughed into one hand.  "I might stop by there on my next trip out."

"Be careful," the old man cautioned him.  "Do not get carried away."

Haru bowed and took his leave.  Two weeks later, he was gone, leaving with Toph and Teo to head back to the Earth Kingdom.  While the Greatest Earthbender in the World intended to hang out with Teo at the Northern Air Temple for several weeks, however, Haru split away from them early on to make his way to New Sozin.

The earthbender was rather unsurprised to discover the a Dai Li cell near the colony.  The surprising part was that someone had apparently beat him to it, or so the young local showing him the remains said.  And he had been correct — the place was a mess, with leftover bloodstains, torn up floors, and broken furniture.  Haru arched an eyebrow as he turned around to look at his guide.  "This place certainly got trashed but good.  They accounted for all the Dai Li?"

The boy, named Ichiro, snorted rudely.  "Of course we did.  Between three professional earthbenders, two firebenders, five soldiers from both the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation, and a pair of Lis?  The Dai Li never had a chance."

Haru laughed.  "Right, good point.  Come on.  There's got to be papers somewhere around here."

Unfortunately, the only papers they found had been dumped in water or burned, so they were utterly illegible.  When Haru swore extensively, Ichiro arched an eyebrow.  "You must've really wanted those papers."

The earthbender paused, considering.  It was plain to anyone with eyes that Ichiro was related to Kouji, as the two looked almost exactly alike.  It was also fairly obvious that Ichiro was a dangerous young man: even if he hadn't implied that he'd been involved in taking out the Dai Li cell, Haru had first found him practising fairly advanced firebending forms, and the farmboy wielded a kusari-gama the way Azula wielded fire.  If Ichiro took offence to Haru's suspicions…

Eventually, the older boy carefully said, "Well, Zuko has a new aide from your colony…"

"That'd be Kouji," Ichiro replied cheerfully.  "My brother.  Kid's a near genius, and he wrote when—"  The firebender cut himself off, blinking.  "Wait.  You think the Dai Li—?"

"Better safe than sorry," Haru said apologetically.

Luckily, Ichiro only laughed.  "I wouldn't worry about it," he told the other with a grin.  "The only times Kouji ever went off on his own were when Yui—"  He abruptly cut himself off again, golden eyes going wide.

"Ichiro?"

"Sozin's balls," breathed the firebender, and he bolted out of the cell.

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Tags: au, avatar, fanfic, roulette