vault66 | Paranoia paranoia everyone's coming to get me.

Paranoia paranoia everyone's coming to get me.

WHO: Azula and whoever
WHERE: The training room, pod room
WHEN: After the Grand opening of the Vault but before her mission on the 10th
WHAT: The Princess self reflects and has a bad night
WARNINGS: N/A yet but we'll see.

If you hadn't been there when it happened surely by now you'd heard about it.

Princess Azula, that haughty, self assured and moody girl who insisted that in her own country she'd been a military leader and a skilled warrior...had fled from the opening of the vault.

Sure you could argue it was a tactical retreat, that the combination of radioactive water and giant crab monsters might be enough to scare anyone away.

But after spending an entire month talking herself up it was hard not to imagine it would be a massive blow to her ego.

The real question is how one deals with such an embarrassment in a place like The Vault?

She avoided talking to people when she could, only coming to the rec room to get food and trying to do it when there was no one else there.

Once or twice you might have seen her lurking around the medical bay, but she never stays long.

Ultimately there are two places she keeps going back to and spending the most time...

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Jiro looks from Azula back to the mirelurk head, and shrugs.

"No, it's not preserved. But it's an insect! The exoskeleton won't decompose for a while. All the fluids are gone."

He has no idea if this is true or not, and after he's said it, he realizes that crabs aren't insects. Molluscs? Crustaceans? Anyway, they're hard-shelled, it's... probably fine.

Was that true? Azula didn't know either but she wasn't willing to admit it.

And, he had helped her rather then mocking her when she lost her nerve. Best to cultivate this relationship for now.

"How very thoughtful of you. You can leave it on the desk and I'll ask Nick if he'll help me mount it on the wall. The first of many victories to remember I'm sure."

With minimal previous interactions with Nick, Azula had heard he was difficult to work with and was wagering that unless she could bribe him, he probably wouldn't do it.

"Were there any casualties?"

He arranges the mireluck head on the desk so its dead eyes stare at anyone coming through the door.

"Nah, no one's dead."

Injuries, he's unsure of. It's not like he checked on everybody. He nods towards the training dummy.

"So what's with this Zuko?"

Ominous and unsettling. She's kind of loving it actually the more she thinks about it.

She nods in acceptance that everyone returned alive. She suspected they had but never bothered to check.

"Zuko is here to help us keep our skills sharpened. While I can do my daily exercises without assistance having tools at our disposal will keep things from getting stale."

She moved over to the training dummy and twisted it's bucket head around so the scowling face she'd drawn on it was looking at Jiro.

"Not to mention he makes for excellent stress relief."

"Eh, it's kinda nice not to do this shit all the time."

He hasn't been training at all, and Zuko won't inspire him to get back to it either. The world got blown up or something; what is the point? They can be lazy bastards, they're all gonna die anyway.

"What'd he do to you?"

He suspects it's personal; otherwise, why give the dummy a name and a face?

She feels almost nostalgic thinking about Zuko, shit talking him will be helpful to her mood.

"He's my brother, a selfish and short tempered brat who was always more obsessed with himself then the needs of our Nation. And when his selfishness lost him the crown and brought me to power he decided suddenly he had to be Firelord and usurped me." She sighed and patted the bucket's "Cheek".

"He had to cheat to do it too. He never could match me in combat or tactical abilities."

"Sounds like a dick. Some people want all the power, but they never wanna work for it."

He studies Zuko's 'face'. It's punchable. He approves.

"Exactly. And he had no idea how to rule obviously. But no he just had to ruin all my hard work because of his hurt feelings." She shook her head in dismay.

"Would you believe I once traveled halfway around the world just to bring him home and try to patch things up between him and father? Do I get a thank you? No just more complaints. You'd hate him if he woke up here."

And if she had her way by the time anyone from her world would be just as distrusted and hated before they had a chance to tell her story properly.

"I hate people like that," or demons in his case. "Think they have a right to do whatever the fuck they want to get power. Their feelings matter more than anyone else's."

He's guilty of that selfishness himself to a degree, but he doesn't see it that way, and he can condemn this Zuko person without self-reflection.

"I would blame myself for not being a good younger sister, but obviously our parents had more influence on him then I did." She took up her stance again and began making calculated strikes on the dummy. Each punch and kick had a satisfying amount of thud to it which was helpful in dealing with the complicated feelings she was stuffing down.

"Feelings can't be trusted. They are unreliable, unpredictable and dangerous for a leader. He was never meant for the throne."

"So you don't trust your gut instinct on things?"

That may make her a 'good' leader, but ignoring some feelings is a bad idea in his view.

"Now I never said that." She took a moment to adjust her stance before lashing out again. Each strike perfectly calculated to the untrained eye.

But Azula knew she was missing the mark ever so slightly every so often. And only perfection was acceptable.

"But all things must be taken in moderation. You moderate emotion with wisdom and experience. Like the Firelords before me I would have ruled with advisors who could share their knowledge with me so that my choices were always right."

Not that she needed advisors. She didn't need anyone who might threaten her position.

Unfortunately for her, Jiro has a trained eye and he's absolutely catching those mistakes. Watching her is more interesting than listening to her, because they've gone too far into politics or something for him to stay interested.

"Yeah, experienced advisors and wisdom... Anyway, I brought the... crab thing, so I'm leaving."

Yeah.

"Straight forward as always." She commented slowing her strikes to glance at him over her shoulder.

"Have you found a team willing to tolerate you on the surface?" She had been avoiding Saya but sooner or later she'd have to talk with her again about when they were going to leave.

He's halfway to the door when she asks, stopping to growl in annoyance at her use of 'tolerate'. He doesn't think he's that much of a problem and this is some kind of conspiracy to blackball him from these outings for an unknown reason. The robots may be behind it.

"Fuck you. I'm gonna go even if no one wants to tolerate me."

And he will, even if he has no allotted provisions. He's getting the fuck out of the vault somehow.

"So that's a no then. There's no need to be so crude about it."

He just makes it so easy to get under his skin.

"I'd be willing to put in a good word for you with Saya for when we depart on our mission. But you'd have to do whatever she wants you to do even if it annoys you."

"I don't need you vouching for me, and I'm not going to take orders from some girl!"

It's very easy to set him off, and he can rarely stop himself from taking the bait.

"Now that's no way to react to someone who wants to show you some gratitude."

Sure, that's what she was doing.

"What I'm saying is, to get what you want sometimes you have to play along as distasteful as someone as honest as you are might find it."

"If you want to leave, you could try and do it all yourself and likely get shot by that robot or hurt yourself trying to open the door, or you could accept that someone else has been put in charge for now and prepare for the day when it's no longer necessary that you play along. A day when you can be in charge of your own life again."

Yeah, he's not listening to this.

"Whatever."

He turns around, but not to approach Azula and have a civil conversation. He's taking the mirelurk head back. It's his now; she's lost her trophy privileges.

Well, looks like either way she wins.

"If that's your choice, I guess we'll have to see where pig headed stubbornness gets you."

Honestly it was a wonder that so many men managed to be put in charge of things when they snapped so easily.

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Paranoia paranoia everyone's coming to get me.

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