4;
"Let me dispel any and all stupidity," I say once I have their attention. This happens quickly with the gold plate encased scroll in my hands, a mandate from the Fire Lord to form this company. "I have a list of you, and gathered the best of you at my disposal. Best and most promising in your fields, varied and spread out as you are. You thought you were going to learn from a master and go on, on your own, with barely any purpose? So... some of you think you're going to be a royal retinue. This may be so, once you prove your competence and loyalty. I will also reallocate those applicable, with glowing recommendations."
It is tradition for the armies that royalty serve in and lead in to be brought higher honors, but it is also easily deducible that those officers who become a part of a royal retinue face no chance of promotions. To career soldiers, this is the death blow to their advancement and what kills motivation to get ahead. For those who are smart enough to read between the lines, they know what I am offering: a golden ticket to greater promotions.
Azula does not actually care; she didn't even want to add that additional line, originally. It does not benefit her to have loyal and competent soldiers leave her service.
She does not understand building a network, having only learned at Ozai's knee.
She understands building a core team. I do too. You can't achieve anything without a group of people. No one can do anything alone. But Azula does not understand a lot of things.
Azula isn't stupid. She knows and understands that the officers and junior officers of this experimental company are provided by and provided for by House Qiao, a minor merchant family that rose to prominence three generations ago when their grandfather tested into the top one hundred and gained the administrative rulership of a small town as its bureaucratic magistrate. Since then, and since bureaucratic titles are not hereditary, they have been growing to the rulership of a colonial island in the southern Earth Kingdoms region. Azula knows these facts and understands that the House Qiao is financing this venture not for its sake, but for the sake of becoming closer to the royal family.
What Azula does not understand is why I am bothering subverting these eighty girls' loyalty when the Fire Nation's advanced propaganda machine already insures they obey us. Why do I bother spending these extra specks of time for these insignificant plebs?
In a phrase, I am playing the long game while she only lives the short one.
After all, what is the cost of writing a letter, giving a smile, and speaking a few extra words to another loyal servant? This is my dream, and if by this means I raise each and every one of them to a point where I can know all of their faces and names, then all of them are raised above faceless minions.
But that is just one of the many reasons and motivations at play.
"We will see combat," I add. "But we are not a part of the military structure, even if we are organized in part like one. Ladies, as much as I might love war, we are not in that business."
This causes more stirs than the first announcement. It has nearly caught Azula by surprise too, but she sees my reasoning, and ultimately agrees.
In this, we see eye to eye.
Some girls are relieved to not be in the frontlines. They have a ten-year-old, untested royalty as commander, of course they will worry. Some express their emotions with frowns, because they want to earn promotions. Or perhaps they just like fighting and have been expecting it.
So why do we pull this on them then, if first to promise them rewards if they prove themselves, then remove the opportunities for proving themselves? We both see easily into their train of thought this way.
"You will see trade." Azula then speaks, "But we are not a trade company, even if we will see profits like one. We all want to see our great Fire Nation prosper, but it is not through trade."
Then what are we to do?
Why, there is much to do, and none of this is to spread our talent widely like we have so far laid out.
And this is where things get tricky, and Azula leans on me.
"So let me dispel these rumors. You are not a military police, an internal squad like the Earth Kingdom's whispered Dai Li. You are not courtesan spies, or any other such a force. We will do those things, perhaps, when the opportunity allows. You will spy, you will police, you will administrate, but this is not an organization for any of those individual things!" I then ask, "So tell me, ladies, what is our business? What is the business of the Fire Nation?"
They are young still, even the officers. None of them are older than twenty, and all of the graduates are but fifteen years old. Azula wants to assert her dominance, by finding the strongest of them, pushing them to challenge her authority, and utterly and brutally destroy that girl in an Agni Kai that will cow all of them into submission. But their youth is here to be used against them.
To be so young, they must have, at most, only a taste of war. They have not yet been subsumed into conflict—to be on the other side of the world, fighting in ditches or swamps or snow, smelling only the worst excrements of humanity and sleeping with rats and insects, fighting without actual food or cleanliness for weeks on end—only a few battles close to home at most. They still believe in the propaganda of the Fire Nation.
They still believe in us. They want to believe in us. Everything that they are tells them they need to believe in Azula and her righteous cause.
So let us give them one.
'But that is so amateurish, to do that alone. It can be a part of the plan, but the plan is larger than just that,' We discuss, not for the first time. I wonder if I am actually arguing with myself sometimes, being in this dream of mine.
'And what does the other side of me say?' Azula asks, also not for the first time.
"A surgical strike force is not a new thing; we have the Yu Yan Archers, we know the Dai Li, and espionage is not new to us. So we take things one step further, we make a better model of operations and we use our resources to link it all together to not just have a surgical strike force, but also find exactly what sort of touch is necessary. We have but one business that we have set out to accomplish a hundred years ago. It is a noble goal that brings prosperity to all peoples and that goal has guided us to become the strongest and richest in the world. I have in my hands a mandate from the Fire Lord, endorsed by the Sages, the Bureaucracy, and the Generals." I hold up the golden case that holds the scroll of Ozai's script. It is embossed with the dragon and the phoenix, and its sheen catches every eye in the barracks courtyard. "'We who are the head of the body of the Fire Nation dictate the founding of this company, answerable to only the Royal Princess Azula.' So, we have but one goal. It is that which brings the world into one union."
Our eyes sweep over the girls. Somehow, through Azula's natural and trained presence than from any action on my part, we have their undivided attention. They feet must ache as much as ours, to stand so still, for so long.
So we declare, "Girls, we are not in any of individual aspects of the parts of our fine nation, as important as they may be. We are a whole and representing the best of us all. We are in the finest business in the world, the only business that we have worked for, for a hundred years. We are in the business of world domination. You will train to be the best, you will prove yourself loyal, and we shall strategize and plan and seek opportunities, without limits and with a single purpose. Thus I announce the founding of my Royal Order of the Crown's Inquisition."
<3 Let me go into more detail.
