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"The final item of business is morale. Crew morale has been better, sir. With the second anniversary of your noble quest a few weeks ago, many are realizing that this will not be a short term assignment."
Lieutenant Jee was the only person Zuko knew who could make the words noble quest sound like an insult without any change in inflection. Something about the way the damned armored shoulder piece settled extra doubtfully about the man.
Zuko bristled. "Maybe if they spent less time complaining and more time doing their fucking jobs --"
"Language, Prince Zuko!"
He barely registered Uncle's interjection. "--we would have some leads on the Avatar to follow!"
"I was under the impression that Avatar related research was your exclusive area of expertise."
That uniform-enabled emphasis of the last phrase should be illegal. It would have to be Zuko's first order of business once he got his honor back.
"What Lieutenant Jee means, Prince Zuko," Uncle broke in, "is that, after some time, people begin to miss their families and old way of life. When setting out on a new venture, there is first a honeymoon phase which can last up to a year. It is often followed by frustration, but eventually adjustment and acceptance. In the meantime, perhaps more fun bonding activities, such as music night, can be instated to raise crew morale."
Zuko frowned. "We used to have game night, until someone kept cheating at Pai Sho," he grumbled pointedly.
"The moves of a master may very well be incomprehensible to the novice --"
"Although," Zuko spoke over Uncle's defense, because the old man was definitely lying. "I suppose. We could try a drama night? Theater and such."
Jee's armor doth protest too much, although this time Zuko could tell it was a result of a full-body shudder. He frowned. Was it really such a terrible idea? Even Uncle looked … nauseous. Had he drunk some bad tea? Was someone trying to poison him? Zuko had the sudden urge to throw the teapot out the porthole.
"The juiciest daikon is best left to mature deep under the cover of nurturing soil…"
Uncle couldn't be too badly off if he was quoting proverbs. Zuko relaxed minutely, and did not throw the teapot out the porthole. Which was open, at least, he noted belatedly.
Anyway, why was Uncle going on about root vegetables? Did he mean…the root cause of this morale issue was undercover? Was Zuko supposed to go dig it up?
Oh. Uncle was a genius, sometimes. It wasn't the cause that was undercover, it was something else -- someone else -- who needed to go undercover.
Zuko coughed, loudly. "Very well," he announced. "Your report has been noted. I'm coming down with at least a day's worth of something, must be the draft."
He glared at the porthole for good measure, and almost forgot to add: "Oh, and we have a new intern arriving tomorrow. It's an exchange program. With, uh, Zhao. That is common, and perfectly legitimate."
Jee lifted his eyebrows. "We just got a new guy a week ago, sir."
Zuko asked himself what would Azula do and made something up. "And he's having trouble settling in, so it might be good to have someone else around to help him acclimatize."
"That is very … considerate of you, nephew," Uncle said with a meaningful pause, and only looked a little bit worried so Zuko knew that he knew that he'd gotten the message. Zuko would have winked but that was super obvious when he did it with his good eye, and often not obvious enough with the other one.
He'd thank his uncle for the idea later, in his own way, but for now he had a lot of preparation to do. He already had the beginnings of a character in mind, but he definitely needed a good costume -- disguise, that is -- or else he'd get recognized right away. Zuko made sure not to be noticed as he took a pair of coveralls, a welding mask and a plain black cap on his way back to his room.
Undercover. Uncle was brilliant. Not that Zuko would ever tell him that.
Zuko was nervous. Why was he doing this again?
"It's so easy to just get so caught up in the quest to restore your honor to its rightful state that you miss what's behind the scenes," he reasoned aloud, as was his habit in the shower.
And he trusted Uncle, and it was Uncle's idea so it had to be a good one. Zuko took a deep breath and tried to project more confidence into his voice.
"I'm looking forward to having some real talk with some real folks."
Assistant Cook Dekku frowned at the speech echoing down the drainpipe that passed too close to his forehead for his liking, and addressed the kitchen at large: "What's that all about?"
"Don't know, put a sock in it." Cook was in a mood. The sock went in, pronto.
"Hi, I'm Lee. Seaman Lee. I'm the new engine technician."
Crewman Teruko stifled a yawn as she watched Jee's armor perform its equivalent of an eyebrow raise. Lee, huh? Weird kid. What was with the welding mask? Engineers weren't on duty yet.
"Does that mean I'm not the new guy anymore?" New Guy asked gleefully, with the tone of one who was about to lose a forcefully acquired nickname.
Chief engineer Hanako just gave him a look. A not-yet-on-duty, pre-tea look. New Guy shut up.
"Is Seaman even a rank?" wondered Teruko.
"If you have to ask, Teruko..."
"I know, I know," she said, finishing in a sing-song tone. "New Kid probably outranks me, too."
New Guy apparently shared her misery, visibly wilting as it was confirmed that his title would not be passed on to the latest addition. Teruko patted herself on the back for that one.
"Seaman is still technically the entry-level naval rank. It dates back to when 'Hotman' was a common form of address. Also, you know. Pre gender-equity efforts. It should just be Seaperson, now." Helmsman Kyo's morning cheerfulness was gathering glares from more than just Hanako now.
"Who are you, the prince's research assistant?" Teruko snarked. And, going off the fact that she was a Crewman and not a Crewperson, Kyo's knowledge of exactly how far the gender equity front had not progressed said that he wasn't a particularly good research assistant either.
"I'm just saying. Makes sense that the old man gave the guy a hundred-year-old command manual. I think there's only, like, a preface about honor and such in the latest version, not the freaking chapters the prince quotes at us every day." Kyo finished by waving helpfully at New Kid, inviting him to the table already overpopulated by one New Guy.
Teruko started consolidating objects back onto her tray. She was going to have to abandon ship.
Jee was ninety percent sure that Lee was Prince Zuko.
Kyo was the unofficial welcoming committee. Say hi to one new guy and the others immediately leave you alone with him until you're sure he wasn't sent here for being a murderous sociopath (non-murderous was generally accepted) and they let the pattern continue. Such was life, but Kyo didn't mind too much. New people were interesting.
"Do you guys like working here?" New Kid asked, sitting down at the table. He was wearing a welding mask. Kyo wondered if he was going to eat anything, since he hadn't made a move to lift the mask.
"Work is work," Teruko answered shortly, and then predictably abandoned Kyo with not one but two new people, one of whom had yet to be confirmed as non-homicidal.
"Yeah totally," New Kid agreed. Lee, Kyo told himself. Don't be like Hanako. These are human people with names, not pieces of machinery.
"So, what do you think of Prince Zuko?" Lee asked. "Do you believe him when he says he's going to capture the Avatar?"
Good self-preservation instinct, asking about the prince, Kyo noted. Might still be a murderer, but at least not suicidal.
"I will say this for the guy, he gets a bad rap," Kyo answered, then elaborated when no one immediately stopped him. "I mean, he's trying to accomplish something that has never been done in the history of the Fire Nation! Capture the Avatar! Who might not even exist anymore! That's impressive, I admire the guy."
"Exactly, exactly," New Lee was quick to agree with him.
Which showed a basic grasp of human logic, so there was a good chance that the kid was all right. He was still wearing the mask, though, and not making a move to touch either it or his breakfast. So hopefully just enough psycho to be interesting without actually hurting anyone.
Welcome to the Wani, Lee.
Teruko plopped her tray down across from Lieutenant Jee. "So where is the prince today, sir? It's quiet. Too quiet."
Jee gave the Official Answer. "Sick."
Teruko interpreted that to mean that she shouldn't alert anyone if she saw a black-clad figure sneak onto the ship via the prince's porthole later in the afternoon. Which also meant that the Wani's second-loudest-yeller would then spend the rest of the day sleeping it off and the next day in his room with the new acquisition. "Sweet," she concluded. "Guess I don't need earplugs today."
Jee didn't raise his eyebrow, but his armor creaked.
Teruko amended her assessment. "I'll keep them in my front pocket just in case."
It was Muffin Day. The best spirits-damned day of the month, and Hanako had not had her muffin yet. In addition to that affront, she'd had her silent-brooding-over- tea wake-up ceremony interrupted by an inane question from the new guy, and now Lee was failing to identify the five wrench in the haphazard collection of second-tier pieces inside the intern toolbox.
"Okay, okay, its real easy," she stressed. "All you gotta do is weld the intake valve."
"So… remove… this?"
The fuck was the kid doing. Could he even see anything behind that welding mask? She jerked it up so that he wasn't looking through the tinted part and he yelped and brought his hands up like he thought she was going to tear it off. Which why, just put it up so you can see like a normal person, you dumbass.
Also: "Does that look like the intake valve cover, what's wrong with you? Why is this so hard for you to understand?"
"I don't know, but can you please stop yelling at me, it's starting to stress me out!" By the end of the sentence, Lee was yelling back at her.
Oh no he didn't.
Hanako slammed the welding mask back down to stop any further noise from issuing from that general area, took a deep breath, and tried again, louder.
"Okay. Can we weld the intake valve now, please, so I can go have my muffin? I haven't had my muffin yet, Lee."
Which of course made it the perfect time for the new guy to come by with his mop and kick the fucking five wrench -- oh, hey, there was the five wrench -- away from Lee.
"Whaddup, Lee!" New Guy sounded way too pleased with himself, but at least he made himself scarce after that.
"Hey, he kicked my wrench!" The kid's body language was doing a decent job of mimicking a kicked mimic-catopus. "Jerk face," he muttered.
...did the Seaman not know how to swear? In addition to not knowing how to find the intake valve? Hanako wasn't running a fucking kindergarten. Not without her muffin.
At least now he'd managed to get the correct panel off so that Hanako could see the intake valve, and well, fuck. That wasn't just a hairline crack, the valve had failed with some shear to it and she was going to have to use a flare bevel weld on top of a lap joint and where were those Agni-damned temperature tables when she needed them.
Some of this ended up being said out loud, in between expletives, and the kid was just standing there like he had no idea what was happening. Hanako made a brief pause in her swearing to sum up. "Go and get the goddamned manual, idiot."
He fled.
Zuko had a newfound respect for the work that was done around the ship. As well as a renewed respect for large physical distances between himself and the chief engineer.
Zuko doubled back once he was out of Hanako's line of sight and changed direction from the storage room slash library to his own quarters. He'd borrowed the manual last night, and spent a few hours really trying to get through it, but it was incredibly boring once it got past general concepts to the technical details. Eventually he'd figured out that a lot of the content was meant to be referenced on the job, because it would be impossible to memorize it all. By that point, Zuko had already decided that method acting wasn't for him.
Zuko grabbed the book off his desk and stuffed it into his coveralls -- hmmm, maybe that's exactly what this pocket was designed for. He paused as he passed the back entrance to the kitchen on his way to the engine room. It smelled like the cooks had just taken something delicious out of the oven…
Before he knew properly what he was doing, Zuko was on the move. He ducked into the kitchen and slid behind the shelf he knew was right by the entrance, peeking out quickly to mark the positions of staff in the room. The heavy tint of the glass in the mask really did make it hard to see, but Zuko had spent enough time with his left eye in bandages to know how to compensate for reduced vision. The kitchen wasn't too busy, at the moment, but he still needed to wait until…
There. Cook's back was turned, and it was a good bet that Assistant Cook Dekku wouldn't notice anything below a normal person's chest height. Zuko ran deeper into the room, slid under a table whose bottom shelf was blessedly clear of the usual pots, and filched a muffin from the pans cooling on the opposite counter. Wow, these coveralls really allowed for so much more freedom of movement than armor. And, in addition to having a book-sized pocket, they also had a muffin-sized pocket. Zuko wondered if they came in black.
A moment later he was out the entrance that opened into the mess, still unobserved, and hurrying back to engineering.
Zuko found Hanako elbow-deep inside the mechanism, and he wordlessly presented her with both the manual and the muffin.
She stared up at the muffin -- and himself by extension -- for a second with a strangely affectionate expression on her face. But then she opened her mouth. "How the fuck am I supposed to eat this, Lee?"
Oh. Right. Hanako's gloves were covered with grease and her hands were full of different metal objects in various states of disassembly, and would she please stop yelling?
Zuko stuffed the muffin her mouth. The yelling stopped.
That was … a surprisingly optimized solution, Hanako thought as she chewed. It required some recalculation on her part, but Hanako was very good and she was not going to let a little muffin geometry defeat her.
Maybe the kid did have what it took to be a decent engineer. Now if he would just stop avoiding her like she was going to weld his fingers together, which would defeat the entire purpose of his minor usefulness so why would she even do that.
"Hold this," she directed, swallowing down the last of the wonderful, wonderful muffin and trading her normal gloves for the thick welding ones. "Just so." Normally she would just use a clamp to position the two pieces relative to each other, but this particular spot was hard to get an angle on. Hanako breathed, and let the chi burn out hot and fast through the opening in the very tip of the welding glove's pointer finger. When she could feel the heat even through the welding mask, she knew that it was hot enough to melt steel, and also, incidentally, human bone.
"That's um. Some really good firebending," the human-shaped clamp commented.
She regretted that, between the two welding masks, he probably couldn't see the look she was giving him, so she articulated it instead. "It's just a stick weld." You idiot was implied, but apparently went straight over his still-taller-than-her-head.
"I mean," he continued to stammer. "You're way better than the people on Zhao's ship. By like, a long shot. I bet they'd have to use a gas welder to get a concentrated flame that hot."
"Yeah, well, that pompous penguin-otter probably has the budget for fifty gas welders. On this ship, we've gotta make do. And you bet I'm better than Zhao's people. His ships have the fuel efficiency of a sky bison, but the asshole's got firebenders to spare so it's not like he needs to respect thermodynamics anyway. My engines do the work of a dozen imperial firebenders --"
"Can you teach me?"
Hanako considered.
"Can you get me another muffin?"
"Have you guys seen Prince Zuko's broadswords?"
"Yeah man, those things are weird looking." Kazuto preferred a good old spear any day.
"No they're not, they're antiques. Purely decorative. Here, let me go see if I can find them, I'll show them to you."
Lee was... not really helping Kazuto feel more integrated around here. If anyone was supposed to be showing off weapons, it should be him. To firmly establish his dominance as been-here-a-week-so-still-more-senior-than-you.
"Look, I found Prince Zuko's broadswords. Look at them up close!"
Then there were swords in his face. Way sooner than he'd expected, too, not that swords in his face was something he'd ever expected in the first place. Kazuto backed off. Lee didn't. "Those things look dangerous, man!"
When faced with danger, it was fifty-fifty on whether Kazuto would attack or start blabbering, and one of those fifties had gotten him assigned here. "Poorly made, too, like a little kid made them."
"Then you don't have to look at them anymore!"
Kazuto ducked as Lee flung the swords at the wall and stomped off. This guy, Kazuto thought, watching the retreating coveralls, cap and mask combination. This guy had issues.
"Yeah, this has actually been a rough year for my family. We lost our son two years ago. He was in the officer training program, assigned to the 41st division. Barely sixteen, and already so proud to be a soldier. The wife and I are getting by, but since I shipped out we've been separated and I really don't see things getting better any time soon…"
Jee was not sure why he was telling Lee all this but the kid had flat out asked, and it was close enough to the anniversary that Jee was doing his best to get quietly drunk every night so that the what ifs couldn't haunt him.
"Wow, sir, I'm really sorry about that. Must be hard." Lee's voice was muffled behind the welding mask, even though there were no cracks in the vicinity besides the one in the kid's voice. It was … strangely empathetic in a way that Jee hadn't known the prince to be capable of.
This time of year, Jee would take what he could get.
Hearing that Jee lost his son really struck a nerve with Zuko. Especially since he was technically the one who killed him.
What would Azula do? Wait, no, she wasn't any good at cheering people up. Zuko thought of the most cheerful person he knew.
What would Ty Lee do?
…Arts and crafts. With lots and lots of glitter.
Jee was not expecting Lee to ambush him as he left the bridge and shove a scroll into his hand. That, at a glance, contained lurid colors and was covered in glitter.
"I ran into Prince Zuko in the bathroom, he was puking his guts out because he's sick but anyway he told me to give you this," was the rushed explanation before the kid disappeared out the nearest hatch, leaving Jee with a handful of … whatever this was.
With much trepidation, Jee unrolled the parchment. There was a drawing of a rainbow, which was horrendous, and a set of characters in calligraphy, which was surprisingly well done: After the rain comes the rainbow.
What. The fuck. Lee.
Jee was about to incinerate the thing when he caught sight of script on the back of the paper. The handwriting was cramped as if it was written in a rush, but not a callous rush, more of a … gathering-up-courage kind of rush.
Sorry my father the generals I killed your son. It was my fault, I wasn't good enough, and I'll make it up to you once I have my honor back and can do something about it. Sincerely, Prince Zuko.
Jee did not, in the end, set the paper monstrosity on fire.
"A buddy of mine saw Prince Zuko take off his shirt in the shower, and he said that Prince Zuko had an eight pack. That Prince Zuko was shredded."
Kyo wondered how Lee thought this was an acceptable way to start a break time conversation. Seeing as Lee was currently positioned on the 'mild' side of sociopath, Kyo also couldn't say that he was exactly surprised.
"Your friend's a liar, man." Was Lee trying to bait Kazuto? Because it was working. "Prince Zuko is a punk ass who's fifteen and looks like he weighs thirty kilos soaking wet under that armor of his."
Kyo couldn't help but stifle a snort of laughter at that. He'd been there when the prince's voice changed. Among other things, and first impressions were hard to forget.
Apparently Lee didn't think it was funny. And why did Kyo suddenly smell smoke? The needle on the psycho-meter suddenly shot to a very familiar spot just shy of the red zone as Lee said, unsurprised: "Oh look, New Guy's on fire."
"Dude, Lee straight up sucks," Kazuto lamented.
Kyo nodded, and meant to reply, but his tongue wasn't working. He'd noticed, in the course of throwing water on the fire that was Kazuto's shirt, that the new guy was shredded. And also a firebender, not that either he or Kyo had remembered that when it was most relevant. The first fact was... interesting. The second did not bode well for their mutual survival.
"First whore leave!" New Guy shouted, waving his approval papers happily. "Who else is coming?"
Jee sighed and hoped it wasn't too early to give up on his only off-duty night of the week being pleasant and uninterrupted by children.
The second and only technical child in the mess just about choked on his own inhalation. "Shore leave? Don't you mean shore leave?"
"Right. That's what I said, New Kid," replied ...Kazuto? Was that New Guy's name? Jee didn't need to remember his subordinates' names when he was off duty.
"Uh huh. Because, um, I'm sixteen. Which is legal. So even if you had said whore leave, I could do both. Which I have, when I was on Commander Zhao's ship. Whoring, that is. And leaving too, but --"
Jee did not want to hear about Lee, whoring, and anyone who got off on power as much as Commander Zhao in the same sentence. He made a mental note to never let the commander and their still- underage prince be alone in the same room.
"Sure, Lee," Kazuto's sarcasm levels said he had a bone to pick with the other boy. "You look like the kind of guy who's seen plenty of action."
"That's right! I've seen a lot more that you have." If it was possible to puff oneself up in coveralls, Lee did a reasonable job.
Jee was unimpressed. So was Kazuto. "Oh yeah? And how many is that exactly? Because zero is not a positive number."
"It's not a negative number either!"
This was reaching uncomfortably into number theory, so Jee reached for his drink.
The kid seemed to have realized his mistake but was just digging the hole deeper now. "More than you because you're straight which means your available selection is fifty percent less!"
Yet thankfully with less complicated math.
"You're being heteronormative, I could be gay and also have fifty percent less choice!" Point, New Guy.
"… I didn't think of that!"
"That's because you're being heteronormative!"
This was the worst one-upmanship contest Jee had ever seen, if only because neither contestant appeared to have ever even gotten past zero to one on the real axis.
Fortunately, all the yelling about implicit biases was interrupted as it roused Cook from the kitchen.
"All right. Which of you clearly equally inexperienced young men actually knows anything about shore leave?"
Jee was, overall, always very pleased with Cook's performance.
"It's good for morale!" Lee was quick to volunteer, and quicker to fuck it up completely. "And...it's also important to, um, stimulate the local economy. By supporting independent business owners. Including whores! Oh, and buying alcohol. Maybe also drugs."
"Stay away from drugs, kid. And alcohol is the gateway drug. As for the whores... first of all, the legal ones are called prostitutes, and their work is not so much about stimulating the local economy as stimulating the local... landscape."
The two most junior crewmembers traded confused glances. Cook sighed. "Kid, do you even know …"
His voice drifted off in a manner which told Jee that Cook was calculating the cost of the fine sake offerings required to keep the souls of the boys' future spouses from returning to haunt them should nothing be done to remedy the situation, and that the Wani's budget was found wanting.
"Genji. Go get the fucking wooden dolls."
Jee did not need to censor his crew's language when he was off duty.
"Sure thing, Cook. Um, do you mean the fucking wooden dolls or the wooden fucking dolls?"
Jee should have censored his crew before they started using their swear words literally, and was that really the kind of drawings Genji used the poseable mannequins for?
"...I'll get both," Genji offered, then disappeared.
Jee's no-longer-pleasant-evening progressed further south as Teruko slid in along the bench until she was next to him, glass jug of fresh-smelling liquor from Dekku's not-so-secret-rooftop-distillery in hand. The rest of the off-duty crew followed, as she laid down the rules of the game: "One for body parts, two for positions, three for something they already knew, sir?"
Since Teruko was literally so far down the food chain that she was basically plankton -- or whatever plankton ate -- Jee felt there was little harm in nodding his assent.
Cook gestured with his extra long cooking chopsticks at first the drawing dolls and then the two young men seated in front of him in the same way he might indicate both chopped vegetables and a pot of boiling water.
"So. Sex. What's it all about? And if you don't raise your hands, I don't call on you and you don't talk."
A hand shot up. "Yes, Lee."
"Producing legitimate heirs!"
Cook sighed. "Technically correct. But also…?"
A different hand, this time. "Love and intimacy?"
"Thank you, New Guy. Also, fun! Now, it's important to know the consequences so that you make smart choices before your decision-making abilities abandon you. Yes, I'm looking at you, Lee."
"You don't know me."
"Did I call on you Lee? No? Then shut the hell up."
Cook gathered his thoughts, and then proceeded to toss them out one at a time like stir-fry scraps into spitting-hot wok oil. "Firstly. Sex with women can lead to children. Which can lead to child-support of varying lengths, depending on her nationality, which given your current wages leads to bankruptcy. The age of majority is eighteen years in the Earth Kingdom, not sixteen like in the Fire Nation. If a Water Tribe woman's wearing a pendant, don't even touch her because that shit is for life. Also the men have weapons that whack you in the back of the head when you least expect it. So, class, what have we learned about cross-cultural child support? Yes, Lee."
"Eighteen years means super broke, don't mess with Water women, and don't let their men take you from behind."
The onlookers drank twice. Teruko had indicated her doubts about the validity of the qualifying statement with a waggle of her hand, but she was easily overruled.
"Very good, Lee."
The kid fucking preened underneath his coveralls and welding mask.
"We're skipping dating and romance because both of you are assholes with the combined charm of a bowl of sea-prune stew, so you're going to have to pay for anything you get."
Cook's assessment was met with no objection from his impromptu class.
Hanako, who appreciated quantification over qualification, extrapolated that their combined self-esteem was on the same order of magnitude as their charm.
"Our next topic is protection. Remember, with the ladies it's eighteen years in return for one night of fun without it. And pulling out is not a legitimate method of birth control."
The boys were whispering. Cook did not tolerate inattention in his kitchen any more than salmonella tolerated high temperatures. "Is there something you would like to share with the class, Lee?"
"Um. I was just telling New Guy that this all sounds a lot like siege tactics."
Cook… had heard a lot of things in his life. This was not one of them.
"A conquest in one night is saved eighteen years of provisional considerations if the conquered terrain is similar to one's own?" Lee quoted. Cook stared. Lee tried again. "A rapid retreat is the best strategy for keeping valuable leverage out of enemy hands?"
Cook decided that the best way to deal with this insanity was to ignore it. He put down the cooking chopsticks. And picked up two pieces of fruit. "Each of you, take a banana and shut up."
"That sounded like something the General would say," Kyo muttered to Teruko.
"You mean that the General would Ba Sing say?" she shot back irreverently.
Jee groaned, and drank, even though it was against the rules.
"Next, we're going to talk about lubrication."
"Lubri-what?"
Hanako watched as Kyo banged his forehead against table and forgot to pick it up again. She took a long, slow, drink and rescinded whatever vaguely optimistic thoughts she'd ever had about Lee's future as an engineer.
Half an hour later saw a traumatized kid who no longer cared particularly about his welding mask stumbling over to Jee's table, eyes fixed on the glass jug that was being passed around. "Teach me about drinking."
Eh. Why not. Jee didn't want to remember this night either.
An embarrassingly short time and small volume of liquor later, the kid was swaying on the tabletop, welding mask in hand.
Jee had not consumed enough alcohol for this. Not that it mattered how much alcohol Jee had consumed.
"I have a bombshell announcement, guys. I'm not Seaman Lee, I'm --"
"You're Prince Zuko." Jee didn't need to see the prince pull off the black cap to reveal the world's worst case of hat-hair to know what he was about to say.
A little to his surprise, Hanako and Kyo both echoed him.
Prince Zuko looked crushed, but hopefully he was drunk enough not to register the full weight of the implications.
"I knew it from, 'hi, I'm Lee'," Jee explained, taking extra effort to be gentle.
"I knew it when you stole a muffin," added Hanako, with no such effort.
"You stole a muffin??" Cook was not pleased.
"Two," said Hanako, every last centimeter smug.
"I knew it when you set Kazuto's shirt on fire," said Kyo amicably. No doubt his finely-calibrated psycho-meter had put two and two together.
The other drunk teenager looked just as pissed off as the prince normally did. "I have no fucking clue what the prince is really like," Kazuto announced, also standing up but only slurring his words a little, "since I've only been here a week. But you're a jerk who's got some major issues, Lee."
Jee anticipated fireballs, and in the end might have preferred them to what actually happened next.
Which was a disturbingly moist-eyed Prince Zuko reaching down non-aggressively to grab at Kazuto's flailing arm and saying: "So are you, Kazuto. So are you."
"… You knew my name this whole time?!"
"Of course I know your name, you're on my crew." Zuko had finally managed to capture one of Kazuto's limbs and it now looked like he was using it to help himself stay upright on the tabletop.
Kazuto was not, in Jee's estimation, a naturally helpful person, which was probably part of the reason why the prince ended up toppling off the table and landing like a jacket draped over Kazuto's shoulders.
"We really connected today," the prince was saying to Kazuto's neck, but for some reason he was holding eye contact with Jee.
Kazuto appeared to be anxiously backing off from the physical contact and suddenly Jee was covered in overbalanced teenagers. He tried to push them off but only succeeded in getting them to lean harder on him, like they were trying to … to hug him, or something.
This terrifying suspicion was confirmed when Kyo moved in, gripping the extremely fit teenage firebenders harder than was strictly necessary to keep them from falling over, and Teruko piled on with the knowledge of assured impunity that accompanied her particular brand of chaos.
Jee's wide eyes met Hanako's with an unspoken command: Get the General. Now.
From the middle of the press of bodies, the prince was still speaking. When he wasn't sniffling. "I had a blast today. I really learned a lot and people are going to love the new me."
By the time General Iroh arrived, Jee had not relaxed and given in to the embraces of one boy the age of his son when he last saw him and another the age he would have been now. Jee also did not understand at all the sad, knowing look the General gave him, before the old man gently peeled his own boy away and started herding him out of the mess and down the hall.
Iroh kept a firm grip on his nephew's collar. Zuko was oscillating between draping himself over Iroh and getting distracted by the latest object that caught the light and trying to disappear up the nearest ladder or out the nearest porthole.
And he was talking, too, at a normal volume for once even though Iroh didn't understand a lot of what he was saying. He knew this feeling was often mutual in their particular relationship, however. "This was the best idea ever Uncle, I'm gonna tell everyone about it, I bet it could even help out people who are good with people, like Azula, except that Dad would never put her on a ship because she's too good, he'd better not put her on a ship Uncle, and I'm also gonna tell… I'm gonna tell…Zhao and then he can try it and maybe be less horrible. If that's even possible. I guess I don't know that many people. Do I need to know more people? Do your Pai Sho friends already know about this? When do I get to have friends? All my friends are going to hate Pai Sho."
Iroh didn't know what his nephew was talking about, and then he did and definitely didn't want to talk about it, and then he wondered if his nephew did indeed have more enemies than friends, and then Zuko threw up into the welding mask that he was still carrying around.
Fortunately, by that time they were already at Zuko's quarters.
"Set a course for the South Pole, Lieutenant!" The order, issued from where the prince was standing under the shade of the command tower, squinting, was not as loud as it could have been.
Jee turned slowly to face, anticipating the world-weary, too-old-for-the-frozen-wasteland-of-the-poles-and-I'm-sure-the-Avatar-is-too-sir creak of protest from his armor.
Nothing happened.
Jee frowned, and tried again.
Zuko smirked, and it only looked slightly painful due to the pounding headache the kid must have. "The intern was assigned to oil your armor after your shift ended yesterday. With actual oil, as per regulation."
"Where is this intern," Jee said, perfectly flat, "so that I can assign him latrine duty in perpetuity."
"Oh, you know interns. They never last long." That smug face deserved whatever the hangover was doing to its owner, tenfold. "And how is crew morale today, Lieutenant?"
"Better, sir." Jee said, projecting as loudly as possible in the prince's direction. He already missed his squeaky armor.