Chapter 1-Childhood

One of the advantages of being a prince was access to knowledge and teachers. Although my father and grandfather did not like me, but teachers were singled out. After I started walking and talking, I was taught the basics of magic, mostly just a simple meditation designed to help me feel my inner energy and start managing it a little. Until I was three years old, I didn't do anything other than such meditations. When Azula grew up, she joined me in learning the basics, but meditation was clearly not for this little girl. If I was a quiet kid, Azula was a hell of a mess. She had already been able to use primitive Fire Magic since she was a child, which was why her resemblance to fire devils was quite striking. And in general, she really didn't really need meditation, she could already create fire, and many times stronger than mine. It would be silly to argue that Azula has a clear talent in Fire Magic, but now this little piglet in the fire discipline is doing me in no time, which raises Azula in Ozai's eyes, and on the contrary, underestimates me. Our mother Ursa, treats us both rather coldly, for me this is a small problem, but Azula, not feeling enough return from her mother, decided to get parental warmth from her father, and showing her success in Fire Magic, she gets approval from Ozai, especially against my background, Azula's success is very much in contrast for the better. I could only show half of my strength, if the other half of my strength related to Ice Magic is seen, I'm sure that nothing good will happen to me. But my weak ability in Fire Magic was only one of the reasons why I wasn't favored by my royal relatives. The second item was my appearance, it was not visible at birth, but when I grew up and I grew hair on my head, it turned out that the left half of my head has a normal black hair color, the same as all the inhabitants of the Land of Fire, but the second right half of my hair is completely white, like a gray-haired old man. My right eye is black and my left eye is blue. The white side on the right is slightly better at using Ice Magic and slightly worse at using Fire Magic, and vice versa, the black side on the left is better at using Fire Magic and slightly worse at using Ice Magic. In general, neither my grandfather nor my father likes my strange appearance. This also put Azula a little higher above me, she didn't have any such flaws in her appearance, she looked like a beautiful black-haired girl with golden eyes, when she grew up, she would be no less beautiful than Ursa. But even though she looked like a little angel, Azula acted like a little devil. She could easily set fire to the teacher's pants if she didn't like something, she had nothing to fear, her father was the prince of the Fire Nation, and her grandfather was the Master of the Fire Nation, and they were both very happy with Azula, so she could do what she wanted. Azula treated me with disdain, as my father treated me, and Azula respected Ozai very much, and his attitude towards me was transmitted to Azula. I understood all the factors that affect the girl's relationship with me, and I tried to treat her like a sister myself. If my father and grandfather were adults whose attitude towards me I perceived without distortion, they considered me an unworthy heir, and I considered them assholes, I could understand my mother, it was difficult for her to love children, from such an asshole as Ozai, then Azula was a little girl, her attitude towards me was no longer based on personal feelings, but on imitation of adults whom she respected, and "Well, I can't stop admiring the beauty of the palace... and how uncomfortable I feel here. — I was walking along a huge corridor decorated with columns, and I was walking from the palace library to my room. After six years, Azula was sent to the academy for girls, but I should have been sent to the academy a year ago, but they decided not to embarrass the royal family, and not to show such a ridiculous me in front of the children of the Fire Nation's nobility. Besides, as it turns out, I'm quite smart, and even though I'm not as good at Fire Magic as Azula is, I can easily learn the usual disciplines. This fact does nothing to rehabilitate me in the eyes of my grandfather and father, but it really pisses off Azula that I turned out to be at least somewhat better than her. While Azula is at the academy, I spend my time in the library, there are books on world history and magic, mostly on Fire Magic, but there are also references to various techniques of magic of other elements, and how to deal with them. There are not so many techniques for Fire Magic, various fireballs, fire jets, fire whips and whips, fire waves, and the most apogee of fire magic is the creation of lightning. To create and control the flame, they use various stances that dynamically change, forcing the internal energy to flow in a special way inside the body and break out in the form of fire. In general, all these movements are similar to the Kung Fu fighting style, where both hands and feet are actively used, as well as various pirouettes in the air. To create a normal fireball, you need to make a sharp lunge with your fist, and release internal energy, which will take the form of a fire projectile. But if you make a complex pirouette and finish it with a lunge, the resulting fireball will be several times stronger. You can create fire without any training at all, but in this case it will be quite weak, plus, you still need to actively move in battle, and if you move in the style of Kung Fu, you can not only fill the faces of your opponents, but also strengthen your fire magic with this. And another aspect of Fire Magic is proper breathing, you need not only to perform various somersaults, to strengthen your magic, you also need not to be out of breath at the same time. Azula has a fairly strong yellow flame without using any techniques, and when she moves in a special way, her flame sometimes becomes so hot that it changes its color to blue, which means that the temperature of such a flame is about ten thousand degrees, while her normal flame has a temperature of five thousand degrees. I usually get a red-orange flame with a temperature of a couple thousand degrees, and if I use techniques to strengthen it, it turns bright orange, raising the temperature by a thousand degrees ... apparently, the part of my aura responsible for predisposing to Ice Magic still suppresses my Fire Magic, which is why I eventually lose to Azula in the power of flame. From all this, it can be concluded that if I develop using the standard methods of fire mages, I will always fall behind my sister. And now I'm just developing techniques that will help me gain an advantage over an enemy who surpasses me in strength. Although, how do I develop it? I'm just trying to refine them, using my knowledge and imagination, it may or may not work out. However, right now I still don't develop Ice Magic, but rather focus on Fire Magic. Ice magic will have to be trained in a place far away from the palace of the royal family of the Fire Nation. When I entered my room, I saw Azula with a girl, probably a friend from the academy, whom she had brought home to play. — Oh, my beloved little sister Azula, what an honor to have you in my room... again, I hope you haven't burned any of my things yet, as you usually like to do?" I smiled at the girls. "Mei, this is my ridiculous brother Hyung. Tell me that his black-and-white hair is disgusting? I suggested to my father several times to cut his bald head so that this clown wouldn't walk around our royal palace. Azula said. "Your name is Mei, greetings young lady, I am struck by your beauty. He took the cute girl's hand and kissed it, which made her blush and Azula grimace. "Let's go fight, silly weak brother, and I'll show Mei that you're not worthy to be called the Prince of the Fire Nation!" - Azula decided to assert herself in front of her new girlfriend at my expense. — Well, why fight, my beloved little sister Azula? Let's have a threesome with your friend. I smiled at May again. "May won't play with a weakling like you. Come on, May. Let me show you the garden, and there's a lake full of fish, and you can watch me hit them with fireballs, and they twitch funny in their death throes before they float belly up. Azula dragged her friend out of my room. "What a vicious, bloodthirsty bitch she'll grow up to be if this goes on like this." I watched Azula leave. "The main thing is that we grow up stronger than Azula, and then we will re-educate her, just like Esdes once did." Да Yes, exactly what you think, you dirty pervert.≫ — You are like this. I don't deny it. Okay, so I decided to let you know that we've already accumulated enough energy to restore our Space Pocket. In this world, the spiritual background is quite rich, and I was able to activate this skill quite quickly, it works as usual, the object itself disappears, but its weight is distributed to our body. It has also already begun to gradually restore the domain, its usefulness is difficult not to evaluate, it will be able to increase the volume of our internal energy reserve.≫ "Great, because I'm a little annoyed that Azula goes to my room as if it were her own, you can't have any of her own things, this bitch will come and burn them to ashes." — I tried to move the nearest chair to the space pocket, and I succeeded. Now I can have a book where I can write down my ideas about magic, and it can be stored in a spatial pocket. Even now you can load all sorts of garbage there to start strengthening the body. Well, now I do not need to eat myself, you can load food into the spatial pocket, and move it directly to the stomach or mouth, depending on how it will be more convenient. The food here was quite delicious, they were still prepared for the royals, but I would not refuse the meat of some dragon ... however, my great-grandfather Sozin announced a dragon hunt several decades ago, whoever killed the dragon received a huge honor and the title of "Dragon", so all the dragons were killed, and by now, if they are somewhere, they hide very well. The last dragon I saw in the west was killed by my Uncle Iroh before I was born, which is why he now has the title "Dragon of the West". It is the dragons who are the true magicians of fire, from them this magic was learned by the ancient people of the Fire Nation, in those days such magicians were called Warriors of the Sun. My great-grandfathers Sozin and Avatar Roku had tame dragons, which are quite reasonable here... but that doesn't make them any less delicious. And besides, eating a dragon gets a significant boost in Fire Magic, so they were hunted down. Eh, they don't think about the descendants, that's what I need to eat right now to strengthen my magic? Maybe some phoenix, which seems to still exist somewhere, but it won't be easy to find them either. So far, my Fire Magic, let's be honest, is a hat, all of it leveled by some metal shield that can block my pathetic attempts at this magic. Even Azula's magic, though superior to mine, is still just a fairground trick. It takes dozens of years of practice to achieve truly impressive results, so in my previous life, I focused on artifacts, and I could create some kind of energy cannon in a couple of weeks, and it would shoot projectiles that exploded like rockets. To learn how to produce such projectiles yourself, you need at least several years of constant practice. Of course, in the long run, having enough power to blow up a mountain on your own is very tempting, but if you know how to make artifacts, you don't need dozens of years of practice, you can achieve the destruction of the mountain in just a couple of weeks needed to create a cannon. I'm not so pressed for time right now, and I can only learn how to fire destructive projectiles myself with my magic-shmagia. My idea for improving fire techniques is quite simple, you take a fireball, squeeze it as hard as possible so that it has the smallest possible size, because large fireballs fly much slower than small ones, but also, in this ball you need to pump as much fire energy as possible. You'll end up with a small, fast clot of plasma that can penetrate any armor, and then explode like a rocket. This is a technique I haven't seen in the library, and it's not exactly obvious to mages who haven't encountered firearms and missiles. I have another fire technique, also based on rockets, namely a jet of fire from the legs and arms to fly at the speed of rockets. A similar principle is used by strong fire mages to speed themselves up during combat, but they don't have the strength to fly properly. I can absorb heat energy directly from the air, and use it to maintain flight... sort of. So far, this is only in theory, although I am sure that I will succeed, but now I need a place where I can experience all this. Unfortunately, I am not allowed out of the palace, and it is not very convenient for me to experiment here, under the supervision of my "favorite" relatives. However, I still won't be able to do anything at first, and the initial stages of mastering these abilities will be quite similar to training a normal fireball and a stream of flames. Now, during my training sessions, all I did was throw fireballs and shoot streams of fire from my hands and feet, while Azula mastered all the techniques of Fire Magic. But as the saying goes, it's better to master one move that you've trained a thousand times than to master a thousand moves that you've only trained once. I had to modify the idea of fireballs a little, the projectile had to be made more durable and stable, otherwise a normal fireball is just a bunch of fire Qi,which quickly dissipates. The desired effect was achieved by making the streams of fire energy in the ball rotate in a spiral, the rotating Qi creating a strong and stable spherical shell, where it was possible to additionally pump fire energy. Schizophrenia said that I had invented Rasengan, and it was not enough to invent it, it was also necessary to master it,and then reduce it and pump it up with energy. All this magic practice took a lot of time, I practically did not get out of the training ground, I ate by moving food to my stomach from the spatial pocket, I replenished energy from the environment, if you train near the heat source, you could imperceptibly replenish your strength with Cold Magic, taking energy from the fire and adding it to yourself. When Azula finished the first year of her academy, Ozai decided to reward his beloved daughter and take her to Coal Island — it was the resort island of the Land of Fire, Ursa would go there, and I would be taken along. That's right, we have a vacation there almost every summer, only last summer we stayed in the capital so that Azula could better prepare for the first year of the academy, she may have been a talented magician, but she had to pull up the usual subjects with the teachers. The first time I visited Coal Island was when I was three years old, when I met Uncle Iroh for the first time, and he and his son came to rest on Coal Island from the Kingdom of Earth, which he was still trying to conquer. The Kingdom of Earth is the largest on this planet, so it will take a long time to conquer it. On Coal Island, I could sometimes practice Ice Magic, but other than creating ice by absorbing heat from the water, I didn't learn anything. Too much ice for normal training was dangerous to create, because the island is quite populated, and I was almost always under supervision, it seems that once Ursa noticed my training, but pretended that nothing was happening. Although after that, she became a little warmer towards me, probably thought that I was an Avatar, just like her grandfather. In general, over time, Ursa still developed a maternal instinct, and she began to treat me and Azula with tangible love, but Azula was a complex child, and I didn't really need parental love, but I still began to consider Ursa a closer person to me. We're leaving for Coal Island tomorrow, and I've just come to my room after another training session, where I found Azula again. — My beloved sister Azula, it's an honor to have you in my room wearing the Fire Master's cloak. What, you stole my grandfather's raincoat from the laundry and decided to try it on yourself? I asked. "None of your business, weakling brother! No matter how much you try to train, you will always be weaker than me, and you will never become the Master of Fire! Right after my father, I will take the throne! Azula began to tell me about her ambition. "Well, my grandfather doesn't complain about his health, and after Azulon, his eldest son, our Uncle Iroh, will take the throne. — I didn't see my uncle very often, but he made a good impression on me, he will be more adequate than his grandfather and father, but Iroh has his own son Lu Ten, he is five years older than me, and Iroh is always busy with him. Iroh is almost always in the Earth Kingdom, waging a war of conquest there, only a few times a year he manages to return to the palace to see his son. Lu Teng lives in the Iroh Estate, which is located on the territory of the royal palace. I don't really talk to Lu Teng himself, he seems like a good guy, but I'm not interested in him, either as a relative or as a friend. "That old fool Iroh is not worthy of the throne, our father will take it, and after him I will be Mistress of the Fire!" Azula wrapped herself in the Fire Master's cloak. "Yeah, well done, my beloved little sister Azula. I lay down on the bed. — You will not be the ruler of the Fire Nation!" Azula said. "Yes, yes, I understand. Why do you keep reminding me of this, my beloved little sister Azula? I looked at the little girl. — Why do you train all the time? To take the throne from me! I saw through your plan, weakling brother! You will never be stronger than me! Azula shouted before leaving the room. "Eh, I'm getting less and less comfortable living in the palace ... can I do something to get me kicked out of the royal family?" Or even easier, just get away from your family when we get to Coal Island? Then you need to get some food for yourself. I reasoned aloud. Basically, I was already eight years old, and I was already strong enough to survive on my own. If I'm not particularly good at magic, I still have the skills of an assassin from the previous world, and if necessary, I can defeat a grown man. Plus, my wounds are still healing quite well, once I accidentally turned my finger into an ember during training, and after a couple of hours, it was already as good as new. ≪Status≫ Life 800/800/40 per hour Qi 555/555/92 per hour Characteristics: Power 80 Dexterity 80 Stamina 80 Mind 216 Soul 300 The capital of the Fire Nation was located on the largest island in the country, the main city, along with the Royal Palace, was located in the mouth of a huge extinct volcano. Below the volcano was the port side of the capital, where the less affluent citizens of the capital lived, and various manufacturing enterprises were located there, mainly manufacturing steam-turbine tanks and steam-turbine ships. The capital had a fairly large harbor, where there were both frigates and battleships recently launched from the shipyard, as well as warships with ordinary fishing boats. The next day, we boarded a private steam-powered metal royal battleship and, accompanied by several other ordinary ships, set off from the capital's harbor to Coal Island. Our ship differed from the usual ones in that the conning tower was externally decorated with a pagoda like a royal palace. The Fire Nation's ships ran on coal and steam, and if they ran out of coal on the way, the Fire Mages could heat the cauldrons themselves, using magic. The maximum speed of these steam-turbine ships is about forty-five kilometers per hour. We usually take four days to reach the Coal Island, because in some places we have to slow down, and so we could have reached the maximum speed in three. We spend the whole summer at the resort, and by the fall we return directly to the capital... this time they will most likely return without me.