InsaneJournal

Heat Wave [A:tLA, Iroh, G]
Title: Heat Wave
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rating: G
Genre: Drama
Words: 705
Notes/Warnings: None. Done for "portents" @ theavatar100
Summary: The Fire Nation's exploits in the physical world have repercussions in the spirit world, as Iroh starts to see. Pre-series.


The Fire Nation had always prided itself on equaling every accomplishment that the Earth Kingdom had, built in fire and steel to match rock and mortar. So it was that the university in the Fire Nation's capital was said to rival that in Ba Sing Sei, though few had worked at both, what with the war and all. The campus was at the foot of the tall hill that lead to the palace grounds, perhaps because the Fire Lord at the time of the campus's founding didn't quite trust leaving so many scholars to their own devices.

Most of the university now was taken up with producing the engineers that designed and ran the Fire Nation's war machines, but some buildings still held scholars debating matters of natural philosophy and literature and other more traditional pursuits. It was in one of the basements that Iroh was in now. The charts stretched out on the table and on the walls almost made him think of his old days in the field, plotting the maneuvers of armies.

Professor Arashi didn't much seem like someone the Order of the White Lotus would have an interest in. Like many of his countrymen, he had the typical disdain for the spirit world -- he was a man of science. However, the point became clear after their introductions, when he stretched out a detailed graph.

"Those are a lot of lines, Professor. Do you mind telling me what they all mean?" Iroh peered over them in the lantern light.

"Certainly, General. Each of these blue lines chart the average monthly rainfall of one of our observation stations and the red lines chart the average monthly temperature. You can see the seasons like this," he traced out a wave with his finger along the lines. "We've been collecting this data since the university opened, two hundred years ago."

Iroh wanted to ask how one could measure how hot it was -- the professor had written numbers on the side which might hold the answer, but they might as well be cricket-fly chirps as far as he knew. "That's very nice, Professor, but I think the Fire Lord already knows what summers feel like."

"Here's another chart -- this one's yearly averages," the professor spread it over the first. "The date's on the bottom axis here. See that," he pointed. "The rainfall averages started dropping about a hundred years ago, when we had looked like we had been entering a wetter period." The year after the Airbender campaign, after Sozen's Comet, Iroh noted. "Since then, temperatures have been rising -- even if you ignore hot years here, here, and here-" All years after heavy offensives against the Earth Kingdom or Water Tribe, with the last one being the Siege of Ba Sing Sei, "the general trend is that of warming and drying."

"And I suppose you have an explanation for this, Professor?" Iroh asked.

"Well, not yet. Just some theories. I was hoping that the Fire Lord could spare some of his research money for this. After all, the Earth Kingdom's no good to us as a desert." The professor chuckled nervously.

"I shall have to talk to my brother. But, I've never known him to be loose with his purse strings." Iroh shook his head.

"Well, thank you anyway, sir. At least a good word from you might keep our funding from being cut again." Professor Arashi grinned. "After all, someone has to keep an eye to the sky so that we can feed those soldiers of ours."

Well, he had wanted proof, and here it was, in ink and paper. The more the Fire Nation gained dominance over the other countries, the more the weather reflected it -- even those who didn't believe in such spiritual matters were noticing. Iroh glanced at the other names on the list -- all specialists in their fields, and all probably going to tell him the same thing. That letting the Fire Nation become the nation where the Sun never set would lead to a parched, fire-driven world. Iroh sighed. I shall have to see how to fix this mess Grandfather put us all in.