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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"Princess?" Yunlan straightened from his slump next to one of the pods on the end, the sleep-fuzziness clearing from his gaze as his eyes flicked from the sword in her hand to the strung-out look on her face.

Had she heard him? He might've been snoring -- he'd only meant to sit down and rest for a little, but, well, he'd just woken up. So it'd been more than just a little rest.

"What's up?" he added, keeping his tone deliberately light. She looked like she needed a distraction, and he wasn't going to push with any tough questions until she put the damn sword away.

"Yunlan?"

This one again. The most reasonable but also somehow infuriating in this moment.

"What are you doing in here?" She demanded lowering her sword but not completely putting it away. Not yet.

"Napping." He yawned, glancing down at his pip-boy. "Sleeping? Fuck if I know how long it's been. I figured I'd stick around, see if anyone else woke up."

It was a long shot -- the few pod openings there had been so far appeared to be in regular groups. Besides, no two people here yet had recognized each other, and he knew for a fact the face he most wanted to see was dead and gone.

Sometimes, it still felt better hanging out with these stupid metal Pandora's boxes than staring at the springs of a top bunk in the darkness, alone.

"What are you doing in here?" he shot back, and knuckled a bit of sand out of the corner of his eye.

Something about that slothful response seemed to calm her down. Of course he was sleeping. Sure he was one of the smarter people down here but his motivation seemed very carefully regulated.

"I thought I heard a monster that needed dispatching to protect the pods. Turns out it was just snoring." She lied so easily she didn't even have to think about it. "But apparently you and Chocolat just can't seem to stop fussing with the pod room in the dead of night."

"Chocolat, really?" He blinked, projecting casual innocence. "I must've managed to avoid her down here so far. Hey, have a seat."

He gestured at one of the open pods -- the sides almost made a decent spot to sit, and he doubted Azula would want to sit on the floor like he was. Hauling himself up to something closer to a normal sitting position, he ran a hand through his hair to fix his bangs.

His ankle was killing him. Stupid fucking sprain.

"Also," he added, pouting at her, "I have it on the best authority that I don't snore."

"Whoever said that was lying to you." She shot back begrudgingly putting her sword away and leaning against one of the pods. She would not sit, but acting like she was still deciding on if she wanted to cut him wouldn't help her calm down.

"She likes to look for her Carrot down here, and clean things in case he wakes up and is so disgusted by the state of things that he goes back to sleep."

Putting the sword away was a step in the right direction. Yunlan let his smile go easy and rueful. "Okay, so, he might've been sparing my feelings... and I guess I have Chocolat to thank that the floor's clean enough to sit on.

"I didn't know you were running night patrols around here, though, Princess. You do this kind of thing regularly? We're a long way from the bunk rooms."

"I wouldn't call it a patrol exactly." Because it wasn't. "But how else does one deal with a sleepless night then to stretch your legs? It's not as though I can have a warm glass of milk."

Of all the things she thought she'd miss, fresh dairy had not been high on the list until about three weeks in. She'd kill for some fresh milk.

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to have someone regularly come down here though. Who knows when our next new "friend" might wake up."

"I've been going with cups of warm water. It's not like tea at all, but it's the best we've got." He quirked a smile, looking back at the sea of silent pods around them.

"If Chocolat's down here looking for her boy, and I drop by, and you come by on your evening perambulations... I think we've got it informally covered. Plus, there's not too many hiding spots around the Vault. Not unless someone's getting the front door open on their own and making a run for it."

"I'm quickly becoming tired of "The best we've got." She muttered with an irritated gloom to her tone. She had tolerated so much but she was nearly at the end of her rope. This entire situation was so beneath her.

"Perhaps you're right but I won't be caught off guard." The paper thin excuse for why she was wandering the halls may have held up, but only because he was so easy going. It wasn't comforting thinking about how this commoner seemed to be able to see her tattered edges.

"Given the nature of this place though, what it was built for it's not much of a stretch to imagine there are panels, tunnels, things we haven't uncovered yet. Places where people could be lurking."

"It's not impossible," he shrugs, spreading his hands in a theatrical shrug. "But it's a stretch. We've been picking this place over for months, and they had all those doors they could lock -- why bother with secret passageways? If anything, I'd expect them to have secret cameras."

He shot her a wry grin. "Look -- the best we've got may not be so great, but I could do with a cup of warm water. Why don't you come with me? It's a waste just to heat enough water for one."

There was hesitation and she glanced past him into the shadows of this room.

She had been so sure...

"Very well. There's no point in being down here any longer I suppose." At least no point that she wants to discuss right away.

"How do you maintain such a...casual and positive attitude despite all this? Is it willful ignorance or natural?"

He quirked a smile in her direction and led the way towards the door of the pod room, letting the smile fall away to leave a distant desolation in its place.

"I'm used to leading," he informed her, and hung a left towards the rec room and kitchen. "Nothing kills morale like a leader admitting he's feeling the stress! So."

Another deliberate smile, as he glances back at her. "I'm a good liar."

"Apparently I'm not as good a liar as I thought I was then." she muttered irritated with that answer.

She had staked so much on her ability to manipulate, lie and make people do what she wanted. Now she could barely make her own body and mind comply when she felt overwhelmed.

There was a weight descending on her as she considered the possibility she really was never going to get back to her old self. The girl who had almost led the nation to victory.

"Your smiles are becoming more stretched and thin the longer we stay here." She pointed out perhaps a little bitter "The others might notice if something doesn't change."

"Yeah, well." The jukebox was playing some old song, low and quiet, in the corner of the rec room. Yunlan cast it a glance as he entered, then shrugged it off as background noise and headed for the kitchen.

"You're young!" He didn't even try for a smile to go with that one; he was busy rummaging through the cupboards for the kettle. "At your age I couldn't even stay in control of myself, much less lead. Practice makes perfect.

"Give it another five or ten years, maybe I'll have made it to perfect too."

Another five or ten years: saying it seemed to make the time stretch out before him, vast and awful.

"Then you were weak." She answered plainly "I was raised from birth for perfection and I hit every mark. Even when I wasn't instantly talented at something I would not, could not stop until I was."

For all the good it did. She wouldn't allow herself to dwell on that for the moment.

"I'm sure in five to ten years when we are the pillars of our new civilization you'll look back on these humble beginnings and smile more honestly."

"You know what, you're not as heartless as you like to sound!" Yunlan parked the kettle, full of water, on the stove and hoisted himself up next to it, crossing his legs and tapping the heel of one against the cupboard front. "I'm an old man, Chocolat keeps telling me. Five to ten years, maybe I'll be in the ground."

He shouldn't be up and wandering around in any case. He'd given his life up to burn in the Lantern for an eternity already, if any of his memories were real at all. Absently, he bit down on the edge of his thumb, worrying at the dry skin there. The worst thought -- the more unbearable thought -- was going on, five, ten, fifty years alone.

"What kind of civilization would you build?" he asked, idly, while the kettle simmered away.

"Yes well Chocolat is allergic to modesty and in love with a root vegetable so you should take most of what she says with a handful of salt."

Azula on the other hand never ran out of salt to share.

"One that was organized and logical." She began thinking of her home. "Where everyone was able to become their best selves and put forth their talents and abilities for the good of the nation. A place where skill and ambition is respected."

The Fire Nation, just without the war that had fueled and shaped it for 100 years. Sure that would work.

"Those things are both true!" Well, 'Carrot' was probably a name, but Yunlan could make allowances for hyperbole. He leaned back, raising his eyebrows.

Somehow, while he might have expected 'organized' and 'ambitious,' he wouldn't have guessed Azula'd want to spread that opportunity around to anyone who wanted to grab for it. That'd teach him to be judgmental about hereditary nobility, he supposed.

"I like that idea. Plenty of education, peace and order for the common folk?"

"Of course. In my country even the peasants had education, opportunity, and all served in the military which taught them valuable life skills." She bragged "Unlike the Earth Kingdom which allowed their masses to live in squalor and couldn't support the size of their own territory or the primitive water tribes and their resistance to change the Fire Nation has always been the fastest developing and strongest Nation."

"And I would bring that same sort of power to our new world."

"You divided your countries up by element?" Did that have something to do with the elemental powers she'd been talking about? His eyebrows bent dubiously for a moment before he shrugged. "Same with my country on those three points, not that I can speak for much of the rest of my world. I was always more worried about our local problems.

"Anyway, who knows? If there's any decent civilization out there I'd be happier moving than I would be building a country from scratch. There's just not that many of us."

"Naturally." It made perfect sense at the time. "The people just seemed to gravitate in that direction and eventually the lines were drawn. Though the Fire Nation wound up with significantly less territory then we should have had given our population."

But that was all history and dead Emperors. No point in dwelling on it.

"We'll only know once we're up there." She agreed "Perhaps we can bring some kind of positive change to whatever qualifies for civilization up there, with our radical ideas about keeping things clean and not bathing in radiation."

"Ha! When all your water's glowing, maybe you take what you can get. I'm hoping it's not that bad all over, though."

He'd just skate right past that bit about the Fire Nation's territory. That sounded like an excuse for expansionism if ever he'd heard one. Still: not his world, not his politics, not his problem.

And not likely that they'd ever wind up seeing anyone else who knew what a Fire Nation was, the same way he hadn't met anyone else who knew of Dragon City.

"Your optimism and low standards for success are a fantastic combination." She teased lightly.

"As for me, I may accept a partial victory temporarily but nothing short of complete success can be tolerated long term. I was raised for perfection and will strive for you all to reach it too."

"They manage to keep the water down here radiation-free somehow." He frowned, gaze drifting away to focus on a point somewhere beyond the wall. "And that shit that poured on our heads was not."

Something to put aside for another time: were there filtration systems for the Vault that could clean radioactive water? Or was it just recycling the already-clean water they put down their drains?

"Anyway," he said, shrugging the question away. Maybe he'd try cheating at a hand of cards to get the answers out of Nick. "Let's not get hung up on perfection, Princess, because if you want that you're going to have to make everyone in here agree perfectly about our goals."

The corner of his mouth ticked up, not quite in a smile. "That's harder than changing the world."

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Paranoia paranoia everyone's coming to get me.

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cw, just a touch of suicidal ideation

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