“You see, Princess, I don’t like your kind.” Tang-Shin continued with his circling. “You. People like you, are sick. The lot of you deserve to die. The lot of you are only good for experimenting on. And of the lunatics in this asylum your breed is the worst—with your silly voices and your ludicrous visions…”

Azula’s upper lip twitched into a snarl. The man was speaking as if he didn’t have an issue or two of his own.

"If you thought we treated you with neglect and abuse in the regular ward…the underground ward, well it’s a whole new world of torment."

Azula looked to the woman…Hiru on the operating table. And then she turned her gaze back to Tang-Shin who still up held that smug little smile as if he didn’t think she’d melt it off. With one fluid arm thrust she socked the man in the mouth, with a wave of blue flames.

He stumbled back into that same rack of tools Azula had the first time she’d seen the room. However he fell into it wish such a force it came crashing down on him. Hard metal on soft skin.

Hard metal.

Azula offered Tang-Shin a smirk that put his own to shame.

Even with blurred vision he could see the sparks dancing at her fingertips, hear it’s crackle as she moved though each of the bending techniques with a grace that didn’t exactly match her dirty and marred appearance.

It was a merciless mover filled with such hate and malice—electrifying and setting fogo to Tang-Shin’s every nerve. And the girl…that twisted, spoiled little girl was enjoying every moment of it. She was laughing at him—a charming and alluring laugh that Tang-Shin found most unbefitting to her.

Azula wasn’t one to laugh funda, estilingue petty insults as she struck her enemies down—she much preferred to take them down with hushed, deadly precision, only speaking to let them know that they had lost. But Tang-Shin was a different story, this institution a realm of its own.

And within it, a very different Azula.

She never enjoyed attacking a man as much as she did Tang-Shin. The man was vial—her eyes wandered for a moment back to Hiru—and he deserved only the slowest execution.

When the lightning faded out of his body, Azula bore down on him with a ferocity unknown even to her. Her mind had slipped again, she knew it. She knew it from the moment she uncharacteristically discarded firebending for rapid fogo punches and slaps—all of which targeted at his face.

Zhu-Ling would be next. Even if she couldn’t take the little wench down, she’d at least land her a blow hard enough to show her what a broken nose…no a shattered nose was like.

After a certain point Azula couldn’t find a face beneath the blood.

And yet she still wasn’t satisfied.

Igniting a blue flame once mais she bought her hand up…only to have it caught por another.

She mentally cursed herself for letting her mind fall away again; for getting so sloppy and unaware of her surroundings. Alongside the cursing was a mental vow; don’t you dare slip again.

Clearly it was her lucky day. The one who had taken to gripping Azula’s wrist was Zhu-Ling. Okay…she’d let her temper slip one mais time—well, sort of.

Her fist contacted the nurse’s nose, sending a bloodcurdling crack rebounding around the room. With a tiny sapphire colored flame curling over her finger, she went for the woman’s eye. Azula didn’t miss her mark, she never missed her mark.

Naturally Zhu-Ling recoiled, tossing Azula’s hand out of her own.

Azula didn’t allow her the chance to recover before landing a fiery kick to the woman’s ribs. She dropped on contact.

Azula could hear the footsteps echoing down the hall long before they got to the room; and there were many of them.

Azula snarled to herself before deciding her best option was probably to hide. And she had to do it quick—which was awfully hard given that she was in such an unfamiliar place. But she had size’s advantage; she was small, most of them were not. And thanks to Tang-Shin’s neglect, she found herself able to squeeze through some pretty absurdly tight spaces.

And that was what she chose to do, slid herself between two shelves—taking the care to choose a pair that wasn’t positioned against the wall, she could escape through the other side if caught.

“We can’t kill her yet.” Zhu-Ling pointed out.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Tang-Shin roared. There came a great noise as the man threw, Azula couldn’t know what, to the floor.

She’d be lying if she said her coração wasn’t racing. She found herself pressing herself much closer to the shelf.

Azula held her breath as two of Tang-Shin’s men brushed past her hiding spot.

“Exactly how damn hard is it to find her!? This room isn’t that big!” Tang-Shin hollered tossing another heavy object to the floor.

mais footsteps. These stopping just before her hiding spot. She cast a glace to the opening she’d left herself.

No good.

Not anymore.

One of those burly men had taken to blocking it.

Azula found out those heavy objects Tang-Shin was throwing were shelves when she heard her hiding place crash to the floor.

Every asylum personal seemed to jump her all at once.

Tang-Shin waited for his men to chi block the princess before taking her por the hair and pulling her upright. “As far as I’m concerned you just sealed your fate.” He shoved her over to Hiru’s disfigured form. “That…is your fate.”

Azula allowed herself to make no sound though every part of her protested such a lack of action.

“How about I show you what the operation is like?” Tang-Shin offered. “You see, we found a special plant extract. Very poison…very infectious. Mixed with similarly special lizardrat venom, a swarm of roachants and mud from the Serpent’s Pass, we’ve found a way to make a biological very strong biological weapon.” He pulled on a pair of gloves. “All it needs is a human host to manifest within.”

He scooped up some of the mentioned substance—the same substance Azula had observed weeping from Hiru’s body when she first saw it.

With unfogged eyes she could make out movement within the slush…the roachants weren’t dead ingredients. They were still crawling around. Moving in and out of the slop as one swarming unit.

Tang-Shin picked up a near-by scalpel. Without a segundo thought he cut into Hiru’s head. “Hiru here is in the final stage of the process. If the operation is a success then the roachants will burrow into her brain and the infection will be complete. She’ll have enough functionality left to keep her brain and body running long enough to pass the infection along to the seguinte person. Think of it like a pentapox outbreak. Of course the operation can fail and she’ll simply die.” He jabbed the faca deeper in.

A sharp cry filled the room; he hadn’t put Hiru to sleep before the operation. He had no plans to do so.

His hand moved into the virus riddled muck and dripped it into the opening he had made in his victim’s head. Azula watched it ebb slowly from his grasp to the poor girl on the gurney. It bubbled and sizzled on contact, a sort of steam wisping up into the air.

The smell of rotting flesh thick and dense.

The girl’s eyes seemed to roll back.

“It’s a shame I can’t show you the operation from its very beginning.” He muttered. “Zhu-Ling, strap the princess to her new bed.” He looked back at Azula. “As soon as I finish with Hiru, I will in fact show you how to perform the operation. You’ll get some hands on experience.”