The longer she was suspended upside down, the more and more blood rushed down to her tiny head. She could hear her heart pumping out of her chest. Her ears struggled to process the demands being made of her over the deafening sounds of adrenaline coursing through her dangling form. And all while the smirking Princess' sharpened nails nicked and frayed the material around her ankles.

“This is your last chance,” Azula said. “Tell me the location of the Avatar. Now!”

Despite raising her voice, Azula’s tone never approached that of a shout, hardly rising above the constant simmering malice with which she spoke to most people. Though, considering the size difference between the two, her words still dramatically increased the tiny woman’s quivering. Making her whimpered pleading even more difficult to parse.

Things probably weren't helped by the shrunken woman’s position, still suspended what looked like miles from Azula's booted feet resting on dusty earth below.

She stammered, hardly untangling her fear from the words she was trying to blurt out, barely loud enough for Azula to hear. “P-Please, Princess… I... I never s-saw them. I swear. My husband was minding the house when I went to collect supplies, s-so he would know more than I w-would…”

Even as the words left her mouth, the tiny woman caught on to her mistake.

Despite speaking only the truth, as she professed, which was that she'd never seen the Avatar or his friends, the deflection towards her husband would now place him in the Princess’ sights. And having seen her entire village humbled, sizebent, and toyed with by the young woman, she knew that was the last place any sane person wanted to be.

“So you’re suggesting that I interrogate your husband instead, are you? Have him take your place between my fingers in your stead, whilst you get to roam free? How very noble,” Azula said dryly. She seemed uninterested in concealing the obvious contempt she held for the woman between her fingers.

“You peasants are all just as treacherous as I’d suspected. Willing to sell out your own husband just to save yourself.”

Little did either of them realise, but the woman’s husband was in no position to be sold out, having been one of Azula’s first victims for questioning upon her arrival. And since his responses had proved unsatisfactory, much like his wife's, he’d spent the last few hours flattened into the bottom of Mai’s stuffy boot whilst she and Azula’s other closest ally, Ty Lee, stalked the village for any holdouts.

Since he’d already been there for multiple hours, consciousness was a luxury he was no longer afforded. This was partly due to the overwhelming warmth that always built up inside Mai's footwear, remaining trapped within her leather boot, but mostly it was due to the particularly unpleasant smell caused by the girl’s large, pale foot's profuse constant.

And yet, that foul placement was still much, much more lenient than fate the tiny woman was staring down at as Azula finally slipped her foot, sweating profusely, from inside her loyal boot.

As to which outcome was more cruel, that depended on the victim. Was it more atrocious to live out the rest of their dramatically shortened lives smelling Mai’s sweaty foot from inside her boot, or to suffer the sheer agony that was experiencing life as Azula's living insole - choking, melting, and drowning in the fetid pit that could generously be called the inside of the Princess' metal boot?

To live and suffer in Mai’s boot, or to suffer and die inside Azula’s?

“Mhmmm,” Azula mused, withdrawing her foot and allowing her toes a moment to flex in the chilled air surrounding them. Spreading out to expose some of the worse toe slime she had built up between her digits, containing the lifeless bodies of some past victims. “I suppose I have little more need for you then. Either you know nothing and your husband should be the focus of my attention. Or you know something and you’re hiding it for some ludicrous purpose. In either case, I think there is one clear solution to the problem.”

Sliding the steaming pit of her removed boot under the suspended woman turned Azula's smirk into a hearty laugh as her prey began to scream. Her frenzied anguish made it impossible for the tiny woman to vocalise her agony since she was too busy gagging and retching through the cloud of humid smog now that she was getting a serious sample of the Princess’ infamous foot odor.

Azula treasured her hygiene, believing it essential for any leader to practice the most rigorous standards for cleanliness. Unfortunately, she was also an incredibly active girl who possessed immense firebending talent, which meant she spent half her life dripping with sweat that'd built up on her skin and beneath her clothing. When she was at home, that excess perspiration was easy to manage by giving more work to the handmaidens tasked with cleaning Azula from head to toe, mostly with their scrubs and sponges, but occasionally with their tongues too.

Whereas, when she was out in the wider world, doing everything she could to uphold the Fire Nation law and subjugate its enemies, that amount of sweat wasn't as easily removed. But Azula didn't mind anymore, not like she used to when she was younger. The more she sweated, the more intense her aromas would become. And the worse her underarms, backside, and especially her feet began to stink, the more cruel avenues through which she could torture her adversaries she was afforded.

Without another word, Azula relaxed her grasp on the woman. Letting her drop into a concentrated cloud of foot funk as it desperately fled the maw of her boot. 

She watched as the woman disappeared from view once the heated air became too thick and then moved her focus down towards her toes. Azula’s thin lips curled as her eyes refocused.

Hanging by a shortened length of silver chain, attached to a metal band that was looped around the stem of Azula’s index toe, hung a tiny collared wretch of a girl. Stripped naked and drenched in the Princess’ thick sweat, her arms and legs dangled limply, she was barely identifiable as her previous self thanks to the remaining hints of white and red paint upon her face. Most of it had been scrubbed off during her enslavement to Azula and her friends, washed away by her near-constant submersion in their vile perspiration. Now it merely served as humiliating evidence of her former membership of the Kyoshi warriors before she’d been captured by the Princess and quickly broken. Suki was only given enough special treatment to keep her alive and breathing, unlike the rest of the prisoners roasting within Azula’s inhumane boot captivity, who rarely lasted more than a day or two inside the sickening footwear.

The sight brought a smile to the pale girl’s face, lighting up her amber eyes. Ever since she’d single-footedly broken the lover of one of the Avatar’s friends, Azula had been looking forward to seeing how the rest of his little gang fared against the plans she had in mind. In particular, the arrogant blind girl was of special interest to her considering the earthbender's heightened senses.

The inevitable collapse of the girl’s mind when she would be confronted by her foot odor, combined with that of Mai and Ty Lee’s stifling foot stink too was an image that had played upon Azula’s mind a great deal since she took ownership over Suki’s tiny form. And that was just one of the fantasies Azula had privately enjoyed in her quiet moments as she played with her helpless toe slave.

She shook her fingers sharply, wafting away some of the visible stink exiting her boot in the hope of seeing the newest addition to her boot and also hoping that might prevent the woman from passing out too quickly.

“I’ve grown tired of toying with you, so enjoy your new home, filthy bug,” Azula declared.

Azula leant down and brought her face right over the mouth of her boot. “Try to last as long as you can. Perhaps that way you might live to see your husband again. Naturally, that'll be when I toss him into my boot to perish alongside you.”

She sat upright and briefly shifted her attention back to her favourite prisoner. Azula wiped Suki’s twitching body between a couple of her toes, digging the girl's face in deep until she forced a few choked retches from her, then angled her arch toward the ground and slipped her boot back on.

The tiny woman had squealed all the way down into the bottom of Azula’s boot until she'd landed on the insole with a wet squelch. All of the air was driven out of her lungs on impact, forcing her to re-inflate them with the toxic stench leaking out of every inch of the dimly lit cavern. That moment of pure sensory despair was the reason Azula never placed her playthings into her boots and instead always made sure to drop them from height, knowing from experience that her insoles were sodden enough to cushion their landing and prevent them from dying as a result of the fall.

Through her streaming eyes, the woman had just about been able to make out some of the other members of her village, all of whom had already been worn by the Princess. Each of them dented down into the wet surface she knelt on. Some face-up, others face-down. All of them were enveloped by the constant humid reek rising up around them. Condensing on the top of the boot’s bridge above them, only to trickle back down as a light shower of salty rain.

The sensorial overload was too much for the woman to endure. She completely missed the sound of her tormentor putting her barefoot back inside the boot. As a result, the woman’s final scream went unheard as she was pressed beneath Azula’s oncoming foot, where she would spend the last dregs of her life with her pretty face compressed into the frayed lining of a spoilt young woman’s rancid boot. Unable to lift her head due to the weight of the Princess' sole piling onto her body.