Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Prologue

(♫)

The metallic taste of copper filled Juno’s mouth as she limped across the fractured ground. Broken glass and the shattered remains of people’s lives crunched under her staggering footsteps. She wasn’t going anywhere in particular—just away . Away from the fire and fatalities. Away from the physical manifestation of her failures and the collective failure of the human race.

She grimaced. There was no peace to be found here, among the remains of people’s lives. She had been so foolish to think a few small acts of kindness could make up for the one horrible sin of someone with real power. 

—So foolish to think her father wouldn’t have the last laugh.

The mission was supposed to be straightforward—infiltrate her father’s secret prison. Free the Avatar. Destroy the prison and all of Dai Li’s hideouts around the city. She had spent weeks training agents, gathering intel, and planning what was supposed to have been the Dai Li agents’ downfall. Explosives were supposed to have gone off in Dai Li’s hideouts. The Dai Li agents were supposed to be wiped out. Things were supposed to be better.

But as Juno fled the terrifying power of the newly freed Avatar—who was blinded by pain and rage as the throes of the Avatar State obliterated what remained of the Dai Li prison below the lake—it became clear that her father had been one step ahead of her the whole time.

Fire fluttered over what little wood and… organic matter …remained of this side of Ba Sing Se and its inhabitants. She stumbled over a broken stone column, erected by an earthbender—maybe trying to protect her children from outsiders—or trying to keep her children locked away in a false world. Shards of rock surrounded her, all telling a story of people who built something that could have outlived them. Homes and businesses and monuments—now ruins. This city of walls and secrets had been the perfect place for Dai Li to begin crafting his “perfect world” free of war and famine. But look at it now. How easily one horrible sin had caused the people here to die with their creations. Juno gritted her teeth just as much from the sting of her wounds as the images in her mind of her father keeping her “safe” in her childhood.

There were no Dai Li agents here. No secret hideouts. Only civilians. And Juno’s own crushing guilt.

A cold, salty breeze brushed against her face. She looked up from staring at the ground.

Water. 

Why was there water in the way? Juno’s steps faltered as she shook herself out of her shock, seeing and understanding her surroundings for the first time in hours. She was on the edge of a seaside cliff, having wandered this far from the wreckage of the city in her delirium. Before her was a vast stretch of endless ocean. The Eastern Sea. The once grand fortress of a city was a hill on the horizon, plumes of smoke towering over the deserts and plains. 

Juno stared down at the sharp rocks below. No friends. No father. No future. The weight of it all—the bad intel, the civilian deaths, the fire and the destruction and the failure —came down on her like the waves breaking below. She slowly sank down onto her knees as a cry built in her throat.

“I thought I was doing the right thing!” Juno screamed to the sky. Her ribs spiked with pain from the rapid convulsion of her lungs. “What’s the point of doing good if nothing comes of it?”

If you end up alone, she thought bitterly.

“Your journey should not end here .” A deep voice that wasn’t her own reverberated in Juno’s mind, the disorientation causing her to scramble backward away from the cliff’s edge. 

Father? Juno started to panic, blank spots pulsating in her vision as her heart skipped a beat. Moments passed by, but her father didn’t emerge. Right, probably dead. But who…?

On the horizon, Juno could faintly see an island that was…moving closer? She stood up, absent-mindedly grabbing at the phantom of a dagger long lost in the rubble. Honestly, what did she think a dagger was going to do against an island anyway? Torn between running and a hypnotic curiosity, Juno was frozen in place.

The island parted the sea and glided towards the shore. It looked so slow, but Juno noticed that it was overtaking all the waves headed shoreward. 

It wasn’t slow—it was huge.

The island was feet from the cliff as the last embers of sun faded below the horizon. A huge wall of water shot up the side of the rock wall, displaced by the massive geographic feature. Juno turned away and shielded her face as the ocean drenched her with pounding force.

As the deluge faded into drizzle, she looked up and saw an enormous face. Ancient eyes as large and terrifying as a cave entrance. Canine teeth as tall as watch towers. A mane that draped down to the ocean like a shaft of rain. The creature resembled a giant feline, a majesty as grand as its size. On its back was an island—or at least there were trees and rocks where its back should have been.

“Juno, why do you suffer?” The voice rang out again, making Juno’s eyes water as she forced herself to stand firm against the voice reverberating in her skull.

“Why do you think?” She balled her hands into fists and threw her chest into each word, her long black braid whipping behind her. “You gave us a year to invent peace for a world that has been fighting as long as it has existed!”

“That is not why you are sad. Why do you suffer?”

“What the hell? I don’t have a choice! Life is suffering!”

“Few suffer as much as you.”

“Maybe because I actually give a shit about the world I leave behind!” She meant it as an insult. It was this creature’s fault that humanity’s fighting only worsened. How could the Lion Turtles expect humanity to band together when an existential peril threatened to engulf them? The Lion Turtles’ promise to remove all bending and leave humanity to the dangers of the spirits had had the opposite effect—it was the spark in the tinderbox of a world already on the verge of igniting. Not even the Avatar could bring them back from that.

The creature before her was probably only the first of many, come to make good on their promise. 

“Well, what are you waiting for? Take away my bending already,” Juno said in a cracking voice, hanging her head miserably. “I’m done trying. Power never helped me.”

The gigantic beast closed its massive eyelids. Juno heard a crashing sound of water falling on water as the top of its paw lifted out of the water. No, it was only a toe—with a nail as long as a ship’s bow, the point of which was moving towards Juno with alarming speed.

Juno braced herself. She wasn’t going to meet her end on her knees or with her back turned. This creature was not justified, no matter how old and “wise” it thought it was.

“You have shown that you will treat power with the delicacy it deserves,” the creature rumbled. “The Lion Turtles have fallen. It is up to you now to pass judgment.”

“What do you mean, the Lion Turtles have—?”

Juno didn’t have enough time to process her confusion as a bright yellow light flashed at the tip of the creature’s nails. Blinding energy poured into her forehead and chest.

In the brightness, it dawned on Juno that this creature was entrusting something important to her. Not just a power, but a purpose. Could she really accept it? Could she risk becoming part of the problem?

She clenched her jaw. Dai Li had set her up to perpetuate this horrible cycle, first by grooming her as his successor, and then by manipulating her into harming innocents in pursuit of a just cause. She didn’t deserve power, no. But she did understand that Dai Li had abused his. He had the power to change the world. Instead he chose to use it for his selfish pursuit of control.

I will be different. Juno decided. I will make a difference. I will not be a horrible sin. I will fix this.  

And her world faded into darkness.

—

"Water. Earth. Fire. Air. For thousands of years, the Avatar has kept balance between the forces of this world. Nations, spirits, and benders, bound by the threads that connect all living things, partake in a tenuous dance of harmony with the Avatar at its center. Ten years ago, the Avatar and I defeated my father, an egomaniac with his own web of power and thirst for domination--but there was a cost. The Avatar, spirit broken by my father's torment, abandoned the world. In the absence of the Avatar, someone else must step up to keep balance. My father is alive, his tendrils creeping across the Four Nations once again. I must atone for my role in the Avatar's fall, and so, I will build a new team of benders to take on my father once more. Maybe, if they can set aside their differences long enough, we can bring balance back to this world."

—

Chapter 1:  The Power of an Entrance

“Order! Order! ”

Kelsang groaned as the bald, block-headed earthbender across the room tried and failed again to silence the crowd. The older man stood at the podium, banging his fist on the wood and grumbling self-importantly when the ongoing conversations didn’t die down. Earlier, Lao had pointed him out as one of the Earth King’s advisors. But despite the man’s status, it wasn’t the proper protocol for him to be trying to silence the room. Only the conclave leader could call for order.

Kelsang leaned back in his seat and stared at the ceiling. The Great Hall was a large, circular room carved of marble and granite. Stone columns stood at even intervals around the room’s edge and bent upward, meeting in the center of the ceiling to form a dome, around which danced carvings of tigerdillos, foxdeer, and badgermoles. It was quite a marvel, really—a masterful display of the finer techniques of earthbending. His eyes followed the patterns until his neck began to hurt, and then he shifted his attention around the rest of the room. 

The Great Hall had been designed to host hundreds of delegates for international gatherings in the wake of the Lion Turtle scare ten years ago, but Lao said that the room had gotten more and more empty over the years. In the center of the room was a large, circular table, where Kelsang could see the world’s leaders taking their seats and arranging notes. Beyond that was the concentric ring of benches where Kelsang and Lao sat. It was raised slightly and partitioned from the center by a waist-high wall, forming another level of seating for governors and other officials not quite important enough to sit at the center table. Finally, there was another ring of stadium seating along the wall meant for advisors, minor government officials, and any other official guests, but it was mostly empty. Behind that, the windows between the columns provided nearly panoramic views of the landscape. On one side, Full Moon Bay. On the other, the walls of Ba Sing Se, just visible on the horizon.

The earthbender at the podium continued to bang on the wood with his fist, but his voice was lost in the rising noise and chaos as delegates continued to filter in. Kelsang leaned on the partition in front of him and rested his chin on his arms. It wasn’t a proper airbending meditation posture, but it would do for summoning patience. The more he looked around, the more he was beginning to notice little things that bothered him. It was getting hard to maintain composure amongst all of the irritating irregularities scattered about.

There was a Southern Water Tribe representative to his left trying to sell a ship to a fellow diplomat who clearly wasn’t interested. That was an action of personal profit, a flagrant violation of conclave codes of conduct (which of course, Kelsang had read, cover to cover, multiple times).

The head of the Childrens’ Rights Union was wearing his association’s emblem Up. Side. Down.  How could he possibly expect to represent his people or mission in an international forum and be taken seriously while literally looking like a lost child?

The Fire Lord’s writing brush rolled off the center island of the room and clattered onto the floor. The Fire Lord was immersed in conversation with an Earth Kingdom delegate and didn’t appear to notice. Nor did his aides, who were busy conversing amongst themselves. Kelsang screamed internally. The brush was just lying there, seeping black ink onto the beautiful, unblemished marble floor. How could someone be so careless? And a national leader at that? How did one not notice such an obvious vulnerability? What if he had dropped a sensitive scroll or a sacred artifact? Could he be trusted with anything?

There were agents from the Earth Kingdom’s Ministry of Public Security scattered about the room, dressed in black uniforms and wearing thin jingshen metal bands around their heads. The agents were meant to act as guards, but many of them had left their posts and were conversing with each other instead of keeping an eye out for threats to the world’s leadership. Kelsang felt that, had he been a thief or an assassin, he probably could have gotten away with quite a lot in the unmanaged chaos of the room.

And the noise. Lao didn’t say it would be this loud. Dozens of buzzing conversations echoed off the giant meeting chamber as world delegates disputed mundane problems. Kelsang wanted nothing to do but get lost in a manuscript in the depths of the Central Air Temple library. Quiet solitude. Orderly control over his environment. The chaos of a delegation was too turbulent for Kelsang. And yet, Lao had insisted this would be good for him. 

“You have strong opinions,” his mentor had told him. “You want to solve problems and find solutions. You’re smart, well-read. You would fit right in!”

Kelsang turned his head slightly on his arms to glare at Lao, who was in polite conversation with one of the Northern Air Temple delegates. Lao was some dozen or so years Kelsang’s senior, still youthful but beginning to experience the effects of age, his gray eyes now behind a pair of small spectacles. His arrow tattoos were a slightly dustier blue than the usual, the ink having been improvised from unfamiliar pigments some time after their departure from the Southern Air Temple. He was dressed in robes in the style of the Southern Temple airbenders, but a shade or two darker and slightly red, another result of the differences in pigments available. 

Lao had promised Kelsang that the Winter Conclave would be their chance to finally make some difference. The typical wisdom among airbenders was to detach themselves from worldly matters, and lately, there had been a lot of internal debate among the airbenders about what exactly that meant. Kelsang was of the mind that the original wisdom, as written, was clearly referring to vices—worldly pleasures as they become all consuming—inhibiting one’s path to enlightenment. But the delegates from the original Four Temples read it as any issue of society or politics being a distraction, and often took a hands-off approach to the world beyond the temples, which rarely resulted in, well, results. Lao had been attending the conferences for years, hoping to motivate some positive change and one day be a voting party. He and Kelsang weren’t official representatives of the Air Nomads—that role was still held by the temple airbenders for now. But maybe one day the rest of the world would grow tired of the airbenders abstaining from their vote, and give it to someone who might actually use it. 

Kelsang was skeptical that would ever happen, if the sloppiness he’d seen from the other delegates so far was any indication. He continued to glare at Lao.

Unfortunately, the Central Air Temple elder did not feel the dangerous vibes Kelsang was projecting. I will never forgive you, Lao, for dragging me to this circus.

“Kelsang!” A voice reeking of toxic positivity stabbed through Kelsang’s sulking. “Wow you’ve really…grown up!”

Kelsang slowly lifted his throbbing head from his arms to see a smiling, young adult airbender right in front of him, slouched over so that he was eye-level with Kelsang. It was Tian, a native of the Southern Air Temple…and one of Kelsang’s more ruthless bullies growing up. He had his arrows now, something he seemed to have stooped down to Kelsang’s eye level specifically to show off.

“Do I know you?” Kelsang grunted, blinking indifferently in hopes that Tian would go away.

It didn’t work.

“Oh, do the arrows really make me look so different?” Tian grinned knowingly. “It’s me! Tian! We used to play tag when you were at the Southern Air Temple!” Tian bobbed up-and-down with each syllable like a flying lemur, exhibiting too much energy for an atmosphere already filled to the brim with chaos.

Tag? More like chase, catch, and string up to a tower , Kelsang thought miserably. 

“Ah, right, good times,” Kelsang said through gritted teeth.

Tian laughed jovially. “Yes! Essential core memories for sure. I must say, I was not expecting to see you here. Always thought you were one for studies, not action.”

At least I can read.  

“Lao thought it would be good for me to get out and expose myself to opposing viewpoints. I can’t change the world from a stone tower on an island.”

“Change the world?” Tian made an over-exaggerated gesture of alarm. “That doesn’t exactly follow airbending passivism, does it? I thought you memorized those texts like a decade ago. Are you losing your edge?”

Kelsang’s eyes narrowed. Not only was that jibe ignorant and in poor taste, it was a misquote of the texts. That lack of attention to detail was unacceptable.

“Actually, while chapter three of the Book of the Wind states ‘Nomads will avoid conflicts that would bring harm to living creatures or ecosystems’, chapter five states ‘Nomads will aim to give back to the land as much as they take’. So, it’s our duty to attempt to improve the lives of—”

“Great spirits, Kelsang! I was just joking.” Tian interrupted.

Kelsang could see Tian’s eyes start to glaze over as soon as he had begun, but it wasn’t something Kelsang could overlook. This sort of willful ignorance was the fundamental reason he had left the Southern Air Temple. “Are you so naive that you believe you can just float through life without contributing anything to the world that brought you life or fills your stomach?”

“Hey, I said—”

“You implied helping those in need and fixing the world’s problems is beneath you and the other purist philosophers!”

Tian paused, then smirked. “Wow, are all cultists this defiant of ancient traditions?”

Kelsang was about to leap over the seat when a gentle hand squeezed his right shoulder. “Now Kelsang, don’t feed the trolls.” Kelsang turned to see Lao smiling at him gently. Kelsang forced himself to take a calming breath.

“I’m no troll!” Tian exclaimed.  He started to turn and walk away, but he needed the last word. “You all are just lunatics. You aren’t even real monks anymore.”

Lao waited until Tian was out of earshot, then smiled warmly at Kelsang. “I admire your willingness to stand up for your convictions. It shows you care, and will probably succeed more than any other airbender at chipping away at the world’s issues.”

Kelsang opened his mouth to answer, but Lao lifted a finger in front of Kelsang and his eyes became a tad more serious. “But if you let your passions drive your arguments and fights instead of your mind, you’ll end up hurting someone you didn’t intend to.”

Kelsang bowed his head in deference. “Understood. Thank you for the wisdom.” 

He leaned back in his seat and mentally stepped back. This conclave was an unpleasant environment, but as an academic, Kelsang couldn’t ignore the value it presented the world—and admittedly, himself. It was rare to encounter such a diverse population outside of war.

“All right, all right! Quiet down now! The Winter Conclave will commence now.” A broad-shouldered man, different from the one who had been banging on the podium, stepped up to the room’s central island and addressed them with a deep, commanding voice. Conversations concluded, squabbles turned to grunts of disagreements unresolved, national leaders took their seats at the central island, and officials found seats in the small stadium seating lining the circular chamber to observe the meeting.

“My name is Zhuchi Ren. I will be this season’s conclave facilitator. I trust you have all had a chance to get acquainted with one another?” He wasn’t really talking to the room, just the four representatives at the center table, who looked at each other and nodded. “I have consolidated your proposed discussion points and prioritized them based on the scope of their impact.” He removed a scroll from the side pocket of his robe and unrolled it slightly. “We will begin with the floods. Chief Klo Angor, you will be representing the Water Tribes today? Please state your case.”

A tall, refined Water Tribe woman stood up at the central island. She carried the poise and practice of a trained diplomat and spoke with a calm steadiness. “Three weeks ago, the northern Earth Kingdom received record rainfall, leading to flooding and countless ruined crops right at the end of the harvest season. If unaddressed, this will lead to global famine this winter for locations dependent on imported crops. I approach this audience in hopes we can find common ground to allocate resources and avert mass starvation.”

So professional, Kelsang mused admiringly, his anxiety ebbing away somewhat. This is how a conclave should be run. Concise, orderly, clear purpose, intent to unite, and—

“It’s water. You have waterbenders. Sounds like it’s something you should handle on your own if you’re so concerned!”

And just like that, Kelsang’s annoyance came rushing back like a wave on a beach. The voice came from the second row of seats—the earthbender who was breaking protocol earlier and trying to quiet the room before the conclave facilitator arrived. He was wrinkled and squatty like a potato that had begun to go soft. He was sitting directly behind the Earth King and wore a broach bearing the royal seal of the Earth Kingdom, marking him as a royal advisor. The man came off as a typical earthbender—brash, derisive, and egoistic.

“Waterbenders can’t always be responsible for fixing the world's problems,” Chief Klo responded gracefully.  “We must strike a balance between helping others and conserving resources. In fact, we don’t have to help at all, because we mostly live off the ocean for food. Famine isn’t a concern for us. But large-scale resource scarcity historically leads to war and—"

“I vote to force the Northern Water Tribe to handle it,” the earthbender shouted, flagrantly breaking protocol again . Kelsang looked to the Earth King, figuring he might take issue with an advisor trying to vote on his behalf and reject help for his own people, but the monarch simply sat with his arms crossed, gazing at Klo with a severe look that said he didn’t disagree with his advisor at all.

“Syntagma, for the last time, you can’t call a vote before the debate period has concluded,” the conclave facilitator said, glaring at Syntagma.

“It sounded like the debate was over. I came up with a solution and the speaker has the means and motivation. So why linger?” Syntagma jibed, giving a nonchalant shrug.

“Because your solution sets a bad precedent—that those with the means are solely responsible,” Klo shot back, losing some of her calm composure. “As an Earth Kingdom representative, shouldn’t you be the most invested in this problem, since it’s your country that flooded and much of the Earth Kingdom relies on food grown in this region?”

“Oh yes, but you practically volunteered to fix it,” Syntagma retorted, a large, punchably smug smile growing on his face. “And when I see an opportunity to profit off someone else’s labor, I take it.”

Kelsang was appalled. Was this ideology common in the Earth Kingdom? How could a government possibly function like that? The Earth King’s silence was telling.

“The purpose of this conclave is to work together to avoid the large-scale wars of the past,” Klo spat, her voice rising. “You can build aqueducts with earthbending, and probably solve the problem yourself. You don’t need me, but we can benefit by working together.”

“See, you’re not altruistic!” Syntagma swung his arms over his head as if in grand revelation. “You’re trying to strike a deal as much as me and make a profit off other people. Well, as the King’s financial advisor, I let him know a bad deal when I see one.”

“Working together is how relationships grow!” Klo retorted.

“That’s enough!” the conclave leader interjected. “Syntagma, you aren’t even a deciding party in this matter. Your case has been made. King Guanyu, what say you?”

The Earth King, up until now, had been quietly observing this exchange like a mountain observing a summer thunderstorm. He now turned to Klo. “As the flooding is occurring in the Earth Kingdom, it is our responsibility. While I agree with Syntagma in taking help that is offered, I understand that help comes at a price. If you handle this entirely on your own, we incur debt to the Northern Water Tribe. That is not a good position to put my nation into willingly. I will not allow you to simply enter Earth Kingdom territory and do as you please. However, you’re right in that something must be done. As firebenders and airbenders cannot contribute much to help this disaster, I move to make this a joint venture between the Northern Water Tribe and the Earth Kingdom. We can decide on terms between the two of us.”

Syntagma bowed his head, accepting the word of his king.

“On behalf of the Northern Water Tribe, I accept this offer,” Klo stated, nodding her head in gratitude.

“Movement is accepted. Details can be discussed in a private forum,” the conclave facilitator announced.

Kelsang leaned back and relaxed. He hadn’t realized he was so tense. Admittedly, the conversation had been an interesting clash of ideologies. He might write an essay about it when he returns to the temple.  This was definitely going to be a valuable academic experience.

A hand went up at the center table. It was Abbot Shekhar, the head elder from the Southern Air Temple who had been chosen to represent the Air Nomads. Kelsang resisted the urge to groan.

“Yes, Abbot Shekhar?” Zhuchi said.

The Abbot cleared his throat. “We should not bend nature because we have been overindulgent of its resources. I do believe that the Earth Kingdom should consider that nature has spoken and is moving to retake an area where humanity has encroached too far. It is simply restoring balance, and so, perhaps humanity should accept this result and allow nature to heal.”

Zhuchi glanced between Chief Klo and King Guanyu, neither of whom seemed moved by the Abbot’s words.

“You would suggest we simply abandon the flooded fields and villages?” King Guanyu asked.

“Well, yes,” Abbot Shekhar said simply. “All things happen for a reason, and as I’ve said, it is not our place to interfere.”

King Guanyu’s mouth twitched, like he was very politely trying to contain a grimace. “Thank you for the suggestion, Abbot. However, I think Chief Klo and I have things under control.”

“That is the problem,” Abbot Shekhar protested. “You see, not everything needs to be under your control.”

“I respectfully disagree,” the king said tactfully, before nodding to Zhuchi in hopes of moving on from this issue that had already been resolved.

The facilitator quickly moved them on to the next discussion point. “The next topic for discussion is the Fire Nation’s stockpile of explosives. Some of those gathered today feel that such a stockpile is too large and unnecessary for peacetime. Please, discuss.”

“That’s an absurd notion,” Fire Lord Hozan said quickly. He stayed in his seat, but in his layers of scarlet robes and flared shoulder guards, flanked by his assistants, he looked imposing nonetheless.

The Earth King leaned forward in his seat. “It is very concerning.” Compared to the Fire Lord, he seemed much more—well—down to earth. He was some twenty or thirty years the Fire Lord’s senior, his eyes droopy and sagging under the weight of his nation’s troubles since he’d come to power decades earlier. “Lord Hozan, I’m sure you can agree—it is great that the Four Nations are now able to gather and discuss these issues peacefully in an international forum. However, you must understand, now that Dai Li and the Lion Turtles are no more, there is simply no need for so many weapons.”

“Seeing as we’re at peace—” Lord Hozan argued. “—You have nothing to fear. How my nation postures for defense is none of your business.”

The Earth King frowned. “Oh, I have nothing to fear? Whose weapons found their way into the hands of terrorists ten years ago? Who had to watch Ba Sing Se come under threat from Fire Nation weapons that you lost control of?”

The Fire Lord’s robes flared like the feathers of a phoenix as he rose to his feet. “Are you accusing me of working with terrorists, Guanyu?”

“I’m sure the Earth King meant no disrespect,” Abbot Shekhar broke in, drawing a sharp glare from both the Fire Lord and the Earth King. “—But I think it is concerning to have such a stockpile.”

Kelsang, for once, found himself agreeing with old Shekhar. He and the Abbot had plenty of things to disagree about—obviously, or else Kelsang would probably still be at the Southern Air Temple listening to Abbot Shekhar ramble on about inner peace or some other vague concept totally detached from the world around him—but Kelsang had to agree that there was no logical reason to keep so many weapons unless a threat existed such that they would be used. So of course, now all the other nations were wondering if they might be that perceived threat. The Fire Lord’s severe demeanor did not seem to assuage anyone’s concerns either.

“Bah, who cares what a bunch of pacifists think,” Syntagma blurted out. “What do you care? You’d say it was wrong to have even one bomb.”

“I would,” Abbot Shekhar said with a calm smile, and Kelsang’s eyes nearly rolled out of his head. Abbot Shekhar was utterly incapable of presenting an actual, logical argument. No wonder the other nations didn’t take the airbenders seriously.

“If you truly have no intent to use them, then why not dismantle them?” Chief Klo proposed, becoming the voice of reason yet again. 

“Simple,” Lord Hozan huffed. “They are still perfectly good, so they’ll simply be saved until the next time they’re needed.”

“Lord Hozan,” Chief Klo continued. “Everyone here has expressed concern. It is inherently harder to track and protect so many weapons, so even you should be concerned that some might fall into the wrong hands! Why not dismantle them for the safety of yourself and everyone else?”

“If you’re so concerned, you can buy them and dismantle them yourself. How does that sound?”

Kelsang didn’t even catch what Chief Klo’s response was. If he had ever held any respect for the Fire Lord, it sank as quickly as a rock in a pond. There was no other way to describe what the Fire Lord had just suggested but “war profiteering.” It was like he was dangling his stock of weapons above everyone else’s heads, using it simultaneously as the carrot and the stick. Kelsang could still hear the leaders of the Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, and Northern Water Tribe arguing in the background, but he had long since stopped listening, lost in his own thoughts.

The rest of the conclave was a blur. 

The discussion topics ranged from great political intrigue to the completely mundane. At least an hour was spent on testimonies from postal workers, who were being worked half to death with obscene hours. It didn’t help that most of them were children, hired into the job due to its relative ease. Kelsang thought it was a no-brainer that no one should be working around the clock for mail, but apparently this was quite the controversial opinion. After all, how else were the likes of Syntagma of Whatever Corp or Kaido Dong with his jingshen ore business supposed to continue their quarter-over-quarter growth? And—as Syntagma and Kaido were both quick to point out—global communication had greatly improved since the implementation of this system. Zhuchi, the facilitator, had to call an end to that debate due to lack of time.

Kaido Dong’s jingshen ore monopoly also got a great chunk of time. Back at the Air Temple, Kelsang had taken the time to read up on Kaido after learning he would be in attendance. The Southern Water Tribe businessman had come into his wealth almost by pure luck. During the height of Dai Li’s reign of terror a decade ago, Kaido had discovered the jingshen ore beneath the land that he lived on. A small amount of the ore seemed to disrupt Dai Li’s strange bending abilities, and so the ore was quickly extracted and refined into headbands as the truth of Dai Li’s bending prowess came to light. Kaido, of course, refused to sell the land that the ore was found on, and instead generously “allowed” the Four Nations to purchase the ore from him directly. Even with Dai Li gone, fear that his followers and others with similar bending abilities still lurked among the masses was enough for national governments to be discontent with Kaido’s monopoly. Unfortunately, no law or treaty existed that could force him to sell the rights to the land, and so that debate also ended with no resolution.

The conclave even dedicated a portion of time to debating which nation should hold the next Bending Games. Kelsang could hardly believe it as representatives engaged in vicious attacks on each other, declaring other nations unfit to host such an event due to centuries old conflicts, or lack of paved streets, or the climate . Surely this energy could have been used on something more productive than an argument over sports? Kelsang finally raised a hand to speak, and, as politely as he could manage, suggested the very obvious solution of simply…following the elemental cycle. As the Water Tribe had hosted the Games the previous year and the Earth Kingdom was slated to host it this year, it seemed fair that the Fire Nation would host next, and then one of the Air Temples, and then it would simply repeat. Just as the idea started to gain some traction, though, Syntagma broke in to complain that it was unfair that there were two Water Tribes and four (ugh, it was five now ) Air Temples, and the debate ended up being cut short due to lack of time.

At the end of the Bending Games debate, Kelsang hung his head. This was exhausting. Not only because no one could agree, but because he was surrounded by the most powerful people in the world, and it seemed most of them were more interested in lining their pockets or stroking their own egos than solving real problems. How hard would it have been to help their fellow man?

Even the guards seemed to be getting bored. Every so often, Kelsang would notice one step out of the room. Patrolling the halls is probably a lot more interesting, he thought.

And yet—if Kelsang and Lao ever wanted to have a voice at conclaves such as these, they would have to continue to sit through them, suggesting ideas and hoping that one of them got picked up by someone else who actually held voting power.

After a brief break, during which Kelsang stared at the ceiling trying to find some peace, the conclave reconvened.

“The next series of topics deal with crime,” Zhuchi announced. “This next topic, actually, was added at the last minute, considering the news only broke recently. Here to lead the discussion is Minister Jingcha, the head of the Earth Kingdom Ministry of Public Security.”

A middle-aged woman, wearing a similar uniform to the guards and who wore her gray-streaked hair drawn back in a tight bun, took the stand. Kelsang, interest piqued, leaned in ever so slightly.

“I will cut right to the chase,” Minister Jingcha said flatly. “Governor Jin of Gaoling Province, and his staff, were found murdered in his office a few days ago.” 

A murmur of concern ran through the gathered delegates. 

Chief Klo raised her hand, and Minister Jingcha motioned for her to speak. 

“Was it bandits?” Chief Klo asked.

“We’re still in the early phases of the investigation,” Minister Jingcha said. “But if it was bandits, it’s unlike any bandit raid I’ve ever seen.”

“How so?” asked the Fire Lord.

“Well, nothing was stolen, for one,” the minister said. “And second, despite the murder occurring in the heart of the Earth Kingdom, the preliminary investigation points toward the use of all four elements in the attack.”

“Does that include air?” Abbot Shekhar asked, and Kelsang found himself wondering if the Abbot could count to four. 

“It’s the hardest to prove,” the minister admitted. “But indeed, there were papers scattered widely throughout the scene, which would suggest some use of airbending.”

Kelsang could feel the eyes of his fellow airbenders shifting to him and Lao. The Temple airbenders would love to believe that none among them were capable of committing murder, and so naturally they would seek to pin the blame on the outsiders. Lao’s “Order of the Painted Dragon” had only come about because he and others, like Kelsang, rejected the principle that Air Nomads must detach themselves from all earthly matters, and so they were already seen as spiritually unclean. To the other Air Nomads, they were the prime candidates to involve themselves in such an act.

Kelsang gave Lao a worried look, but Lao stared forward unflinchingly, eyes narrowed behind his spectacles as the discussion continued.

“So, it was a joint hit job,” Syntagma said. 

Minister Jingcha offered a noncommittal shrug. “We’re still in the very early stages of the investigation.”

Syntagma frowned, apparently unsatisfied by that answer. “I don’t get it! Governor Jin was a patriot! Why would anyone want to kill him?”

Kelsang had to stop himself from muttering something under his breath, but to his surprise, someone else in the room said almost exactly what he was thinking.

“Maybe he wasn’t as well-liked as you think?” The voice came from a young Water Tribe man sitting next to Kaido Dong. He had the same wavy, slightly messy hair as Kaido. “Does Gaoling have many problems?”

“It’s just like anywhere else in the Earth Kingdom!” Syntagma huffed. “It’s got rich people, it’s got poor people. It’s got problems, but it isn’t unstable—or at least it wasn’t .”

“Maybe you don’t fully understand the types of problems the people there face,” the Water Tribe man suggested. “After all, you’re very well off as an advisor to the king. Maybe the problems aren’t obvious to someone at your level.”

“I’m sorry, who are you?” Syntagma asked sharply. “And why do you think you’re an expert in Earth Kingdom issues, huh, Water Tribe? Or maybe you’d like to explain why there were waterbenders involved?”

The Water Tribe man put his hands up apologetically. “I’m only saying that if nothing was stolen, the motive must have been personal or political. Maybe a political opponent hired a hit on him.”

“Or maybe someone is trying to destabilize the Earth Kingdom,” Syntagma pressed. “After all, you and Kaido there seem pretty insistent to keep from sharing that jingshen stuff. The Fire Nation doesn’t want to get rid of their weapons which have previously been used to attack us. And the airbenders just don’t want to help anyone but themselves. Wouldn’t it be awfully convenient for the rest of you if the largest, most powerful country in the world suddenly experienced widespread destabilization?”

Diplomats of all nations were bristling now.

“Those are baseless accusations,” Chief Klo broke in. “You have no proof any of the other nations were a part of this.”

“Not yet ,” Syntagma grinned.

Chief Klo stood up and turned to Minister Jingcha abruptly. “Minister, I would like to offer the Water Tribes’ assistance in the investigation.”

“Wha—you can’t help! This is Earth Kingdom business!” Syntagma cried.

“You’ve made it Water Tribe business by insinuating that this was some kind of international plot,” Chief Klo replied. “So I’d like to propose a joint investigation to ensure no nation is accused unfairly.”

“I want in,” Fire Lord Hozan said. “The Fire Nation will gladly prove that the Earth Kingdom’s problems are self-inflicted.”

Eyes turned to Abbot Shekhar, who simply gazed ahead silently. 

“ We would be honored to help with the investigation in any way we can,” Lao said, rising from his seat to address Minister Jingcha. “—If you will have us.” 

Abbot Shekhar turned towards Lao slowly. “Brother Lao, you have no right to speak on behalf of the Air Nomads.”

“I am not,” Lao said casually. “By we , I was merely referring to myself and Kelsang.” 

Kelsang caught the wink that Lao flashed in his direction, and quickly caught onto the game that his elder was playing. By doing nothing, Abbot Shekhar left a symbolic void begging to be filled. Lao would gladly fill it, hoping for some goodwill and greater consideration from the other delegates in the future, perhaps.

“I will accept any help,” King Guanyu said, turning to Minister Jingcha, who was busy writing down the names of the Air delegates in her notes. Syntagma opened his mouth to argue, but the king placed a hand on his shoulder to silence him. “Thank you.”

“ Personally,” Fire Lord Hozan said. “I think Juno may be the culprit.”

“Don’t say her name!” Someone from the crowd cried.

“That thing about saying her name three times making her appear is just a dumb superstition!” Someone else shot back.

There were a few nods and murmurs of agreement from around the room. Others shifted uncomfortably at the mention of the famous fugitive. Kelsang felt Lao stiffen next to him. 

“Any…particular reason you suspect her?” Kelsang asked hesitantly, feeling bold enough to speak now that he and Lao had been tentatively accepted as a part of the investigation.

“I’m glad you asked!” Fire Lord Hozan said, rising to his feet again. “My family has suffered a great injustice. One month ago, my son, Prince Kazuo, was assaulted by Juno and her chiblockers.” He slammed a fist on the table, causing it to rattle. “She took his bending! I’ve taken him to every healer, every spiritualist in the Fire Isles! None of them can do anything for him.”

Looks of concern flashed between the world leaders. Juno had gained global notoriety for her  mysterious ability to permanently block bending. To Kelsang’s knowledge, most of her victims were low life criminals, gang bosses, corrupt village guards, and the like. Only recently, the list of victims had begun to expand into more high-profile territory—village leaders and minor government officials—enough that there were multiple bounties put out for her arrest. And now, she had assaulted the Fire Prince? That was a big deal. For the Fire Lord to publicly admit to his heir’s loss of bending was even bigger—an indication that his desire for revenge outweighed the shame.

The Earth King leaned forward to rest his chin on his interlaced fingers thoughtfully. “This is most concerning news. She’s growing bolder.”

“Yes,” Fire Lord Hozan grunted. “I still don’t understand how she made it past the royal guard. They’re some of the best benders in the world.”

“Perhaps the spirits willed it,” Abbot Shekhar suggested unhelpfully. “Maybe the young prince has done something to anger them.”\

Kelsang could see the Fire Lord’s face begin to grow red at the suggestion. “Prince Kazuo has a divine right to rule! The royal family has already been blessed by the spirits! Chosen by them! Favored! Tell me, Abbot, what could my son have possibly done to anger the spirits?”

To Kelsang’s surprise, one of the guards standing along the wall answered. She was young—almost too young to be a guard—with a baby face and dark hair rolled up into a loose bun and held in place by a hairpin. “I heard a rumor—” she said. “—That the children amongst the prince’s servants were being worked to death.”

There were audible gasps around the room. Even Kelsang had a hard time believing that someone would come out with such a bold statement to the Fire Lord’s face. Such a lapse in discipline and royal piety would have been unthinkable in the Fire Nation.

The Fire Lord’s rage surfaced immediately. His knuckles went white as he gripped the edge of the table, scorch marks appearing beneath his fingertips. 

“Where did you hear such a thing?” he demanded, his staff flinching back at the outburst.

The guard, seemingly unbothered, simply shrugged. “I have family in the Fire Isles. That’s just the rumor circulating right now. People are saying local children who were to be trained as servants disappeared.”

“If you have family in the Fire Isles then you know how despicable it is to speak of the royal family in such a way!” he bellowed. “How dare you! I demand to know your name and the name of your commanding officer!”

“I’m sorry, but I feel the people here deserve to know the full story,” the guard said, ignoring his demands and clenching her fists. “Your son was—”

“Silence!” Fire Lord Hozan roared, lashing out with a sharp motion of his hand. A crescent of fire swept over the heads of the delegates at the center table and out towards the observers on the edge of the room. Kelsang, Lao, and the air delegates nearby ducked behind their seats to avoid having their eyebrows singed. 

Kelsang found his own inner flame blaze with anger.

“Are you crazy?” he shouted as he found his way to his feet.

“Shut up, airbender!” the Fire Lord snapped. “I won’t tolerate insults to my family!”

“This conclave has rules against violence, your Highness ,” Kelsang growled, unable to contain his temper. As far as he was concerned, the Fire Lord had proven he couldn’t handle a peaceful forum such as this one, and he shouldn’t get an exception just because he was the Fire Lord. If anyone else had started bending in the middle of a discussion, they surely would have been thrown out for endangering world leaders.

“Maybe you need to learn some respect …” Fire Lord Hozan said lowly, taking a threatening step towards the airbender section.

“ Kelsang…” Lao’s hand was on his shoulder again, heavy and urging him to stand down. 

Kelsang clenched his jaw and allowed the hand to pull him down to his seat, though he continued to smolder silently at the Fire Lord. From a few seats down, one of the Southern Air Temple elders was shaking his head disapprovingly. Many of the other airbenders were also shooting him scornful looks. Kelsang sank into his seat bitterly. There was so much more he wanted to say. He couldn’t believe a world leader could behave so irresponsibly. Perhaps it was his disgust that the Fire Lord was able to get away with such behavior, but Kelsang even found himself wanting to believe the guard’s accusations. He looked to where the guard had been standing to see if she was gearing up to say anything else, but she was gone, probably escorted out by some of the other guards.

A tense silence pervaded the room as the Fire Lord ambled back to his seat. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Kelsang could practically see steam leaving the Fire Lord’s nose and mouth as he willed the anger down again.

“Anyway…” he said once he had collected himself. “I want to see that fugitive apprehended. I’m certain she has something to do with the governor’s murder.”

Kelsang felt a twinge of resentment tug at his chest. Juno was a fugitive, yes… She had broken the law, yes… But everything Kelsang had heard about her raids seemed to indicate that her targets were, for the most part, people who—well—deserved it. Part of him was grateful that at least someone was doing something, even if Juno’s methods were a bit extreme. She was holding accountable those who were otherwise above the law. Those who were “too important” for their nations to bring them to justice on their own. The world’s elite might not see it that way, but to the common people, like the guard who had spoken out, it was the sort of justice this world had been sorely lacking. Juno transcended the Four Nations. With the Avatar missing for the past ten years, someone had to step up. Although Kelsang didn’t want to pass judgment on Prince Kazuo without some proof, he couldn’t help but feel the Fire Prince had done something to deserve this. Conducting a raid on the Royal Palace just seemed too risky to make sense otherwise. 

But, Kelsang didn’t dare say any of this out loud. The last thing he and Lao needed was to be labeled Juno sympathizers.

“I don’t know about that,” Chief Klo said, the voice of reason in the room again. “Everything I’ve heard says Juno and her followers are all chiblockers.

“She could have hired benders,” Syntagma said. “Not saying I would ever do this, but if I were trying to get rid of someone, powerful benders would be the way to do it.”

Even the Earth King gave Syntagma a sour look for that one.

“Oh, come on,” Syntagma groaned. “Don’t look at me like that. Maybe she knows we’re onto her and had to do something to throw us off the trail?”

“I suppose that’s…a theory,” King Guanyu said skeptically. “But we won’t know unless we investigate. Either way, she shouldn’t be acting as judge, jury, and executioner.” He turned to Minister Jingcha. “Perhaps we could also run a joint investigation on Juno? We can’t have a vigilante running around exacting revenge on world leaders. This has become a matter of international importance.”

“Certainly,” Minister Jingcha said, adding it to her notes. “Are all parties on board for that investigation as well?”

“Obviously,” came the Fire Lord’s reply.

Minister Jingcha turned to Chief Klo, who cleared her throat awkwardly. “Yes…the Water Tribe will cooperate.”

The minister’s eyes found Lao next. Kelsang turned to look at him, hoping his pleading look could somehow convey his thoughts. Surely Lao understood what this meant? Could they really commit to apprehending a person who was otherwise in line with everything the Order stood for? What about the Fire Prince? What had he done to become a target?

Lao nodded slowly. “We will cooperate…” he said slowly. “However, I propose that we also be allowed to investigate the Fire Prince for anything that could have led to a—spiritual imbalance—in Caldera City.”

Kelsang had to work to keep his lips from turning upwards into a smile. Lao was truly a genius when it came to navigating the intricacies of diplomacy.

“That’s nonsense,” Fire Lord Hozan scoffed. “Don’t tell me you actually think this is somehow the spirits’ doing?”

“Fire Lord Hozan, please, I don’t mean to insult,” Lao said tactfully. “But the spirits often operate in ways we don’t understand. It can only be to your benefit that we find the imbalance—if one exists—and correct it. If nothing is found, then at least it can be ruled out as a factor.”

“I think that’s reasonable, Lord Hozan” Chief Klo agreed. “You know, it wasn’t so long ago that the spirits were so angered they threatened to destroy us.”

The Fire Lord let out a heavy sigh. “Fine, whatever you think you need to bring that fugitive to justice. I’m telling you though, there’s no spiritual imbalance. Just a crazy vigilante who thinks she’s—”

There was a sudden commotion in the doorway. Kelsang’s head snapped toward the noise. A haggard man with wild amber eyes had burst into the room, flanked on both sides by guards who struggled to hold him back. The man thrashed and strained, pulling the guards along with him down the walkway towards the center table. Delegates jumped up from their seats. Kelsang tensed. There were few guards left in the room now, but two more ran over to back up their comrades as they struggled to restrain the man. 

Just before their reinforcements arrived, the two guards holding the man lost their grip, and he spun around, slinging great arcs of fire between himself and the guards to keep them at a distance. The guards stumbled backwards to avoid the flames.

“Spirits? I can tell you about spirits!” the man declared, whirling around to face the world leaders. His eyes landed on the Fire Lord, and he was instantly overcome with great admiration, his eyes going wide. He rushed forward, causing Abbot Shekhar and King Guanyu to scramble back with fright. But Fire Lord Hozan held his ground.

“My Lord!” the man said, sinking to his knees and bowing before Lord Hozan. “The mission was a great success!”

Fright among the delegates was quickly replaced with confusion. The guards caught up but kept their distance, looking to the Fire Lord questioningly.

“Do you know this man?” King Guanyu asked.

To his credit, Lord Hozan looked just as confused as everyone else. He shook his head, then turned back to the intruder.

“What mission?” he asked, raising one of his thick eyebrows. “Who are you?”

The man stood up again suddenly, snapping to attention. A rigid hand flew to his temple in a sharp salute. “My Lord, I am General Flamer! Slayer of Lion Turtles! Savior of the Fire Nation! Thank me later!”\

Now that he said it, Kelsang could definitely see the Fire Nation heritage of this man. His hair, though it was wild and graying, was still loosely piled into a topknot with the ends sticking out. What remained of his clothes and armor looked to be a mix of muddy red and gray. He was also tall and strong—really a walking stereotype of Fire Nationals—although he looked absolutely out of his mind. “Flamer”, really? No way that was actually his name.

Fire Lord Hozan regarded the man with suspicion. “I don’t recall having a general by that name.”

“General” Flamer seemed totally unfazed.

“Well, you’ll all know me soon enough!” Flamer said, puffing out his chest. “I’m here to report on my mission to the Spirit World!”

“The…Spirit World,” Lord Hozan said doubtfully.

“That’s right!” Flamer cried, pointing out into the audience. He gesticulated wildly as he launched into a ramble. “You all owe me! I led a hundred brave men into the southern spirit portal on the winter solstice. We confronted the Lion Turtles. For one hundred days and one hundred nights, we engaged in a legendary battle of wit and raw fire power! Human versus spirit! Only the strongest would survive. And wouldn’t you know it—I was the strongest.” He cleared his throat, collecting himself before turning back to his Fire Lord. “Your Highness, I apologize for being late to deliver my report. I got a little lost and had to wait for the summer solstice to return.”

Delegates all around the room shifted uncomfortably. These were clearly the ravings of a lunatic.

“Uh…thank you for that report, soldier,” Lord Hozan said with a forced smile, his eyes flicking to the guards, who began to close in on Flamer once again. “Why don’t you go with the guards to get cleaned up?”

Flamer noticed the guards approaching and quickly put out hands to stop them. They flinched, expecting fire that never came. “No thanks. I think the dirt will make me look more heroic for my victory parade!”

The world’s leaders were all exchanging awkward glances now.

All except Abbot Shekhar.

“Did you say you’ve been to the Spirit World?” the airbender asked, leaning in with interest.

“Oh, come on,” Kelsang grumbled loud enough so that Shekhar could hear him. “Are we really going to listen to the hobo? We have real problems to talk about!”

“I’m not a hobo, I’m a hero!” Flamer said, spinning around to jab an accusing finger at Kelsang. “If it weren’t for me, you’d all be sitting here crying about your bending being gone!”

“The Lion Turtles haven’t been seen in years!” Kelsang said. “What are you on about?”

“Years?” Flamer blinked, then raised a hand to stroke his beard thoughtfully. “Hmm. I thought that Juno girl was just messing with me when she said that… Maybe I did miscount the days.”

All activity in the Great Hall seemed to grind to a halt. Even the guards, who had slowly been closing in as Flamer became distracted, hesitated.

“Juno?” Lord Hozan echoed.

As if to prove the superstition true, every window in the Great Hall suddenly exploded into a shower of raining glass. Delegates shielded their heads from the falling shards. Kelsang ducked behind the partition that separated his area of seating from the one behind it. He winced as sharp glass edges bit at the skin of his exposed arms and back.

When Kelsang raised his head, he saw that twenty or so gray-clad figures had appeared around the perimeter of the room, fists raised and ready to attack. The bottom halves of their faces were covered by black masks to at least partially preserve their identities. Even so, Kelsang caught sight of the female guard who had spoken out against the Fire Prince, her black Ministry uniform swapped for the gray of Juno’s chiblockers. The remaining agents from the Ministry of Public Security lay in crumpled, twitching heaps at their feet.

One figure had landed with all the dexterity and grace of a cat on the center table. She didn’t bother with a mask. Descriptions of her appearance had already propagated across the world with the stories of her exploits. She had the dark eyes, wavy hair, and light brown skin common to the Water Tribes and parts of the Earth Kingdom, but it was the iconic gray outfit with its black, flared shoulder pieces that cemented her identity. She rose from her crouched position and flicked her braid over her shoulder. Then, she met the dumbfounded expressions of the world’s leaders with a haughty smirk.

“You called?”

(♫)

Chapter Text

(♫)

Kelsang’s mind raced with thoughts and questions. Why here? Why now? Who was Juno targeting? Was this part of some bigger plot against authority as a whole?

But mostly, he found himself feeling annoyed. Here he was, ready to give Juno the benefit of the doubt, and here she was crashing the Winter Conclave as if to spite him, specifically.

Chaos quickly broke out throughout the room. Fire erupted from Fire Lord Hozan’s hands toward Juno, who effortlessly slipped to the side, the fire quickly snuffed out as her chiblockers blocked his chi paths with a series of quick jabs. The Fire Lord’s aides fell next, their limbs seizing. Then the Earth King and his aides. Then Minister Jingcha.

“Someone send for backup!” Kelsang heard one of the guards yell.

People around Kelsang started dropping. He looked toward Lao just in time to see him crumple from a series of well-placed strikes.

And then it was Kelsang’s turn.

He heard the chiblocker before he saw him. On instinct, Kelsang rolled out of his seat and into the aisle. The chiblocker overshot, his sneak attack from behind ruined as he was forced to catch himself on the partition in front of Kelsang’s seat. Kelsang didn’t have time to think about what this person’s intentions might be. He found his feet as the chiblocker rounded on him. Kelsang lashed out with a gust of air.

Kelsang, being more of an academic than a martial artist, had never put much thought into when or if he might try to get his arrows, but seeing the chiblocker lose his balance and topple over the partition and into the central atrium below—it was satisfying enough that he thought he might have to rethink the whole arrows thing.

A sharp jab in his tricep snapped him out of his brief moment of pride. A second chiblocker. The next strike hit him further up his arm, sending a jolt of pain down to his fingertips that quickly faded into numbness. Kelsang managed to sling his good arm around and put some space between himself and the chiblocker with another burst of air. Then he turned and ran down the aisle in the other direction.

He only got a few steps before he was faced with another problem.

A few seats down, Kaido Dong and his younger companion had risen from their seats to run, but before they could get far, Juno was upon them. She sprang up from below the partition, twisted her hands into the fabric of Kaido’s collar, and yanked, bending him down to her eye level. Kaido gaped back at her in shock.

“Heyyyyy, Kaido,” Juno sneered. “We have some business to discuss.”

Then she planted a foot on the wall of the partition and pulled with all her strength, wresting Kaido over the edge and flinging him behind her as hard as she could. The Water Tribe merchant tumbled to the marble floor with a grunt and skidded toward the center table.

Juno whipped around to face Kaido’s companion, who had his hands raised in anticipation of a fight.

But Juno simply regarded him with a raised eyebrow. “Chai, right? Stay put.”

Then, as quickly as she had appeared, she disappeared into the chaos.

The rustle of fabric behind Kelsang alerted him to another attacker. Without thinking, he jumped over the partition into the center atrium. Fire and water and stray rocks shot over his head as the benders here struck out wildly at their attackers. He took bounding steps across the floor. When he reached the other side, he turned, nearly slipping on the smooth stone. The second chiblocker was only a few paces behind. Kelsang didn’t bother trying to predict the chiblocker’s next move. His only goal was putting space between them. He drew his hands back to summon another gust of wind, but found his right hand unable to contribute to the motion of drawing the air forward. The result was a gust half as strong as it should have been, and instead of pushing the chiblocker back, Kelsang only managed to drive him off course enough that he was able to slip around the punch that had been aimed at his ribs. Another flurry of punches came, and Kelsang found himself dodging and scrambling backwards only just fast enough to stay out of reach, shooting off a blast of air whenever his good hand was free.

At the front of the atrium, Juno had subdued Kaido and bent him over the table, one hand twisting his arm painfully behind his back, the other shoving his face into the stone surface.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you all here today?” Juno called out into the chaos. 

Kelsang couldn’t afford to keep watching, but he kept listening. He managed to drive a blast of air into his opponent’s chest with enough force to knock him off his feet for a few seconds.

“Since you all are the world’s best and brightest, I just thought you should know what sort of man you’ve been doing business with,” Juno continued.

While his attacker was down, Kelsang boosted himself over the waist-high wall separating the circular atrium from the next row of seating.

“Not only is Kaido here the most notorious price-gouger in the world—”

The chiblocker latched onto the edge of Kelsang’s robe as he landed in the section above, stopping him from running further.

“—But he’s also been engaging in tax evasion, bribery, embezzlement—”

Kelsang summoned the force of a gale and brought it down on the chiblocker, who was using Kelsang’s robe like a rope to pull himself up.

“—Forgery, counterfeiting. And illegal wildlife trade to bring exotic pets to his rich friends. But you lot don’t care about that.”

The edge of the fabric frayed and tore, and the chiblocker stumbled and fell, still clutching the severed strip of red-orange fabric.

“You might be more interested in how he treats his employees.”

Kelsang leapt up to the next level of seating, recalling something he read about the high ground being advantageous in a fight.

“You see, exploitation and underpayment isn’t enough for old Kaido here.”

Now two levels above his attacker, Kelsang had a moment to breathe. By now, the chiblockers had established control of the room. Most of the Ministry of Public Safety agents had already been incapacitated. So had most of the conclave attendees. Now, only a handful of benders continued to fend off the invaders. 

“There were rumors that spirits patrolled Kaido’s ships.”

Near the entrance to the Great Hall, Kelsang saw Flamer manage to get the drop on two chiblockers who had attempted to flank him, blasting them back with a fireball from each hand.

“His employees reported that if they ever fell behind, if they rowed too slowly, or if they didn’t load or unload cargo fast enough, a spirit would take control of them.”

Below him, the chiblocker Kelsang had been fighting vaulted over the wall and into the second row of seating.

“But as I’m sure you can probably guess, there is no spirit. Kaido, after all, is a very earthly man who cares about results.”

In a moment of panic, Kelsang ran toward the front of the Great Hall, then quickly realized that was where most of Juno’s chiblockers were gathering, and doubled back the other way. His pursuer mirrored the action in the row of seats below.

“And if he doesn’t get the results he wants—” 

Kelsang whirled around, using the circular momentum to sling a stream of air squarely into his pursuer’s chest just as he attempted to jump up into the third row of seating. The force knocked the chiblocker flat on his back.

“—He bends the very blood in a person’s veins until he does.”

Kelsang had only been half listening, but the accusation drew his attention back to Juno at the front of the room. She was flanked now by half a dozen of her chiblockers. Nearby, Chief Klo, who must have escaped the initial attack on the world leaders, was fending off her attackers with the tea that had been offered to everyone at the center table, but even she paused to listen to Juno’s exposé.

Bloodbending was the stuff of legend—but only legend. Many a waterbender had pondered the question of whether or not they could bend the blood within another person, but few had tried. Of those who had (and would admit to it), most had documented the practice as being far too difficult to be reasonably employed, the waterbending movements required to overcome the natural flow of chi within a body that was opposing them were far too intricate and complex for most benders to achieve. Kelsang remembered reading an account from an accomplished healer who noted even most healers would not cross the line into directly bending the fluid within a living body, since the possibility of causing more damage with ill-aimed bending was so great. Kaido was well-renowned for his ability to steer his ships through dangerous waters with his skilled waterbending, but to bend another person?

Some boos and jeers came from the crowd, echoing similar doubts, but Juno ignored them.

“If someone stops rowing from exhaustion, they are simply made to continue beyond their body’s limits.” 

The chiblocker was back on his feet now. His eyes locked on Kelsang, who was quickly running out of places to go. A few more steps took Kelsang to the end of the seating area and put him up against the back wall near the door, where a few more chiblockers stood, guarding the exit. With nowhere left to go, he turned to face the advancing chiblocker.

“And as for how he learned and practiced such a technique? Well, I don’t suppose anyone has been tracking the dozen or so workers Kaido picked up from other parts of the world whose families haven’t heard from them in months. Why don’t you tell us, Kaido? What happened to them?”

And then, to Kelsang’s surprise, Juno released Kaido and stepped to the side, as if giving him the floor. The old merchant peeled his face off the marble surface of the table and braced himself on his elbows. Even from the third row of seating, Kelsang could see him shaking with rage.

Juno eyed him.

“What’s wrong, Kaido? Aren’t you going to explain yoursel—”

Kaido whirled to face her, his arms tracing the smooth motion of a waterbending whip, but there was no water to be found. The teacups around the table had already been drained by Klo, who was still using their contents to defend herself from a couple of chiblockers some distance away. Kaido swore.

It took Kelsang a moment to understand what happened next. Kaido clawed at the air in a gesture of apparent frustration—but then Juno seized, her limbs going rigid. A choked cry caught in her throat, her dark eyes going wide with pain and fear. Kaido’s face twisted into an expression of frenzied rage, teeth bared and eyes dilated with fury. In a quick motion, he wrenched his hands toward himself, and Juno jerked forward.

It only lasted a second before Juno’s chiblockers were on him, pulling him back and pinning his arms to his sides.

Kelsang didn’t have long to think about what he had just seen. The chiblocker who had been pursuing him was nearly on him. When he was a few steps away, the chiblocker slowed a stroll, in no hurry to catch up to his cornered quarry. Unless Kelsang thought he was going to jump over him with his unpracticed airbending, he didn’t have anywhere to go. It was an all too familiar feeling—his childhood bullies had operated in much the same way. First they would corner him, and when he had nowhere left to go, then they would toy with him.

Kelsang tensed, taking what he thought was a convincing fighting stance, but the chiblocker stopped just outside striking range, glanced back towards the scene at the front of the room, and then back at Kelsang. 

“If I fight you now, I’ll just distract you from the show,” he said casually. “She would want you to see.”

Kelsang stared at the man in confusion, but the chiblocker made no move to attack him. Against his better judgment, Kelsang tore his attention off the man to look down into the atrium.

Juno’s chiblockers had subdued Kaido once again. Two of them flanked the waterbender, who they had forced into a kneeling position, holding him tightly between them. Juno had regained her composure and was scanning the room with a serious expression. Her eyes landed on Kelsang for a moment, as if she really had been looking to make sure everyone was watching. By now, most of the fighting had subsided, either because the remaining benders had been subdued, or because they were cornered, like he was.

“Well,” Juno said flatly, her voice totally calm despite what had just happened. “I don’t suppose we need any more proof than that.”

A middle-aged man from the Water Tribe congregation managed to pull himself to his knees. “Kaido, what have you done?” he asked with disbelief. Kaido did not answer, averting his eyes shamefully.

Juno turned and approached Kaido. She wasn’t particularly tall, but she seemed to tower over him anyway, the waterbender reduced to a trapped mousefly in her shadow. She had full control of the situation. It crossed Kelsang’s mind that Kaido’s outburst may have even been a part of the plan.

She held Kaido’s gaze, and, without breaking eye contact, slowly removed her gloves. She tucked them into her belt.

“Some people don’t deserve the power they wield,” she said.

Kaido’s fury melted into fear, his eyes wide, as Juno stepped forward and pressed her thumbs into his forehead and sternum. As if suddenly ignited, a bright light emanated from her thumbs at the two points, illuminating the room. Kaido thrashed, but his captors held him tight. After a moment, the light faded, and Juno stepped back. Her chiblockers released Kaido, who fell forward onto his forearms. He held himself there for a moment, shuddering. The room held its breath.

Then Kaido lashed out again with the same clawing motion he had used to immobilize Juno before. Some of the onlookers gasped at the sudden movement, but Juno gazed back at Kaido unflinchingly. She held out her hand, and a nearby chiblocker gave her a small canteen. She wordlessly dumped the contents out in front of Kaido, a silent challenge. His eyes followed the slowly expanding edges of the puddle.

“Well?” Juno asked, daringly.

Kaido growled, and swung his arms out in a wide, whipping motion that should have sent a blade of water slashing towards Juno’s neck—but his hands only found empty air. The room went up in a chorus of gasps and cries of disbelief.

Juno smiled knowingly, then held out her hand again. This time, a stack of papers appeared in it. She promptly dropped them on the center of the marble table.

“Here’s all the documentation I have on Kaido’s illicit activities,” she said, and then she held her hand out once more. Her chiblocker handed her another stack of papers and some tightly bound scrolls. She turned to Minister Jingcha, who lay prone and scowling on the marble, her limbs useless. “And, I saved you the trouble of investigating Prince Kazuo.” She dropped the second stack of papers next to the minister’s head, as if to punctuate her sentence. “I recommend looking at them before the Fire Lord’s bending comes back. It’s a great read.”

Even from where he stood, Kelsang could see the minister’s eyes go wide as a stack of papers bearing the official seal of the Fire Nation landed inches from her eyes.

“This is outrageous!” the Fire Lord bellowed, breaking the silence. He was sprawled on the floor next to his aides, all of them evidently suffering from the same pressure point-induced paralysis as the minister. “First you take my son’s bending, then you forge documents with the royal seal and terrorize an international forum? I’ll have your head for this!”

Juno smirked at him. “Get in line.”

Then, on her signal, every chiblocker in the room turned and made their way back to the windows and began securing themselves to the ropes they had swung in on. The chiblocker who had been cornering Kelsang gave him a casual wave before leaping onto a windowsill to do the same.

Juno turned to make her way toward the window, but stopped to call tauntingly over her shoulder, “Pleasure doing business with you, Kaido!” \

Cries and shouts began to erupt from the still-immobilized crowd. 

“She’s getting away!”

“Someone stop her!”

Kelsang shuffled in place, debating whether or not he should do anything.

Juno jumped onto the windowsill of the largest window at the front of the Great Hall. She gazed out over the crowd as she waited for the last of her chiblockers, some of whom supported injured fighters between them. Her eyes landed on Kelsang, and he returned a glare. This had been a step too far. Her serious expression briefly changed into a mildly impressed smirk, a single eyebrow raised at his obstinance.

The door at the back of the room suddenly swung open, and a tall, ambitious-looking captain wearing the black uniform of the Ministry of Public Safety marched in, a dozen other officers behind him. This must have been the backup—but far too late.

“The fugitive!” he yelled, pointing at Juno. “Don’t let her escape!”

“Well, it’s been fun,” Juno announced. “But it looks like I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

She looked out into the crowd one more time, and offered a nod of respect to Chief Klo and Syntagma, both of whom had managed to escape the fight relatively unscathed. Then, just as the captain gave the order to launch a volley of rocks at them, Juno and her chiblockers leapt backwards out the windows, the stones flying harmlessly into the open air as the fugitives rappelled down the building’s sides.

The captain and his agents rushed to the windows, poking their heads out to see where the chiblockers might have gone. The captain turned to one of his lieutenants. “Shut down the ferry and the train! We have to make sure they don’t leave the city!” The lieutenant saluted and scurried off to make the arrangements. 

Kelsang began to make his way down from the room’s highest row of seating, broken glass from the windows crunching under his feet. He flexed his right hand, the arm affected by the chiblock, and found that while the movement was beginning to return, his entire arm still felt heavy and tingly, as if he had slept on it wrong. The other benders also seemed to be regaining control of their limbs, many of them sitting up and massaging bruised arms and legs. 

He found Lao disentangling himself from his robe and held out a hand to help his mentor to his feet. 

“How exciting!” Lao said, taking Kelsang’s hand and pulling himself up. “I didn’t expect to become a casualty today.”

Kelsang frowned. “I’m surprised you didn’t avoid them, Lao. You’re a much better airbender than me.”

Lao shrugged. “They genuinely caught me by surprise,” he said. “I’m impressed you were perceptive enough to sense them coming.”

Kelsang felt that Lao was probably trying to boost his confidence, but he continued frowning, feeling that if he had heard the chiblockers coming, Lao almost certainly had.

“Anyway,” Lao continued. “There was no need. We are hardly high profile guests and were unlikely to be their targets. Better not to cause a fuss.”

“A fuss?” Kelsang hissed, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Lao, the heads of the Four Nations are here! Did you expect me to stand by and watch Juno take their bending or worse?”

Lao leaned around Kelsang to look to where the world’s leaders were slowly pulling themselves to their feet and straightening their robes. “Seems they are all just fine.”

Kelsang stared back at Lao incredulously. Lao was being far too nonchalant about this whole situation. The whole idea of the Order of the Painted Dragon was to not stand by and watch as injustice happened. For Lao to suddenly act as if the correct thing to do was nothing was so out of character that—\

Kelsang’s blood ran cold. “ Lao. Did you—?”

Lao caught his drift, and gave Kelsang a stern warning in the form of an almost imperceptible head shake. 

“You there!”

The two airbenders turned to look for the source of the voice.

“You there!” the captain called again, pointing at Kelsang from where he stood near the marble meeting table. “Come here, would you?”

Lao gave Kelsang an encouraging smile. Kelsang gulped down his growing anxiety and made his way down to the central atrium.

A small gaggle of people had gathered next to the great marble table. Among them, Kelsang could see the world leaders, their aids, the crazy ‘Flamer’ person, Minister Jingcha, and Kaido with his scruffy younger companion.

When Kelsang joined them, the captain directed him to stand a few steps away from the rest of the group. Then he separated a few others from the group and had them stand next to Kelsang. The group now consisted of him, Syntagma, Chief Klo, Flamer, and Kaido’s companion. The captain turned to Minister Jingcha. “Is this all of them?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“All of who?” Syntagma asked. “What’s this all about?”

“You’re being detained for questioning,” the minister said.

“What?” all five of them said in unison.

“Why?” Chief Klo demanded. “What have any of us done?”

The minister pointed first at Flamer. “ You illegally entered the premises, assaulting guards in the process. And you mentioned Juno by name just before the attack.”

“I had important intel to share!” Flamer protested.

She ignored him and moved onto Kaido’s companion. “Juno addressed you by name, did she not, Chai Li Dong?”

Chai Li tensed and shook his head. “She—she targeted my father. She could have found my name while looking into his business. Do you think I’m working with her or something?”

Minister Jingcha wrinkled her nose as if she’d smelled something bad. “I haven’t decided. But inheriting your father’s wealth certainly sounds like a believable motive.” 

She turned to Chief Klo next. “You were the only one among the world leaders who wasn’t incapacitated, and Juno seemed to signal to you and Syntagma when she left.”

Both Chief Klo and Syntagma balked at the accusation. 

“This is completely inappropriate, Minister,” Chief Klo said in the politely scathing tone of a politician. “She was very clearly taunting us.”

“Yeah!” Syntagma agreed. “Look what fools she made of all of us! You’re grasping at straws to find someone to blame!”

“Oh, I’m grasping at straws?” the minister said dangerously. She leaned in a little closer. “I haven’t even begun to address how you abandoned your king in the heat of battle yet.”

Syntagma clenched his jaw, but thought better of saying anything else.

The minister finally turned to Kelsang, and he froze, wondering what his sin had been in all of this.

“You—” she said. “—Were either faking the fight or just extraordinarily lucky.”

“...Excuse me?” Kelsang asked, offended. Faking? Lucky? He’d been giving it his all! “You want to detain me because I was too lucky?”

“Lucky—” the minister continued. “—Or in league with the chiblockers. I saw you standing around up there chatting with that chiblocker, doing nothing as Kaido lost his bending. And then watching aimlessly as the chiblocker escaped out a window, despite being close enough to grab him.”

“With all due respect—” Which is none… Kelsang thought. “—That isn’t proof of anything.”

“And that is why you’re being detained for questioning,” Minister Jingcha finished. “So that we may determine if there is anything more to these…coincidences. I suggest you all cooperate.”

“This is stupid,” Syntagma said, throwing his arms up in frustration. “You don’t have probable cause. I’m too old for all this fighting and political power grabbing you’re trying to do.” He stomped off towards the Earth King. 

“Stop him,” Minister Jingcha said firmly to a couple of her nearby agents. They jerked upwards with clenched fists, and two cones of marble rose to entrap Syntagma’s feet.

“Hey!” Syntagma barked, his arms flying out to keep his balance. He clenched his own fists, and the cones around his feet crumbled. Then, he swung around, pulling the chunks of white rock upward and flinging them back at the two guards. “I said I’m too old for this! Leave me alone!”

The sentiment spread quickly. “You’ll never send me back to prison!” Flamer cried, and made a break for the door. A couple of agents sprinted after him.

In the growing chaos, Chai Li began inching his way further and further from the group, and then he too ran for the door.

Minister Jingcha’s head spun as if on a swivel as she struggled to keep tabs on the situation. “Restrain them!” she cried. The other half-dozen Ministry agents who had been milling about checking on the other downed guards and conclave attendees turned to look at the two remaining prisoners and the three escapees.

Kelsang’s anxiety welled like water overflowing a teapot. He had never really been…in trouble before. If anything, he was a stickler for rules (well, the important ones, anyway) and a law-abiding citizen. Being treated like a criminal made him feel like he had done something wrong. 

He exchanged a look with Klo, and from the worried look in her ocean blue eyes, he could tell she was the same. But out of all of them, surely she had the strongest alibi as a world leader? The most to lose if Juno found her “unworthy of her bending?” The least reason to make herself look guilty by running?

Then, he thought about Lao—and the secret he could not afford to spill. 

Kelsang boosted himself off the ground just as the guards bent a stone vice up from the floor in an attempt to catch him by the ankles, then used air to push himself to the edge of the atrium. From there, he bounded over the rows of seating leading up to the windows. Klo, having also deftly avoided the earth trap, was close behind. When he reached the top, Kelsang stuck his head out the window to gauge the height. It was several stories down, but the ropes the chiblockers had used were still dangling from the roof. He took the rope in his hand.

There were shouts and the sounds of pounding feet as the Ministry guards tried to figure out who was chasing which prisoner. Kelsang looked at Klo, who was now standing at the adjacent window contemplating her chances of escaping this way.

“Hey! Stop!” someone called. A guard had appeared at the top row of seats.

Klo caught Kelsang’s eye and gave him an encouraging nod. Together, they took the ropes in their hands and jumped.

As they swung out into the open air, Kelsang had to wonder what secret was so important that Klo would rather run and cement her guilt than have it discovered.

Chapter Text

As he ran, Chai Li went over his cover story in his head, just to make sure he had it all straight.

I thought it would be good to meet the people my father works with.

I didn’t know he was a bloodbender.

I ran because I was afraid of being accused of the same crimes as my father.

They were all true, except the last one.

From the moment the Ministry’s reinforcements had arrived, Chai Li was certain that out of the five fugitives, he had the most to lose. Nevermind that he might be accused of hiding his father’s bending abilities or acting as an accomplice to his illegal activities. It was the new arrival that concerned him. The captain who had shown up late with another dozen agents wasn’t just any captain, oh no. That had been Captain Lan Tai, the head of the Ministry’s special task force—

—The one responsible for hunting down Dai Li and his agents.

And that was why Chai Li was running. 

In all the time Chai Li had been running missions for Dai Li, he’d never been caught. He’d been recruited as a boy, no older than eight or nine. Even at that age, Chai Li had already developed a distaste for the customs of the elite. His father was always dragging him out to some banquet or ball to impress foreign dignitaries, forcing him into fancy outfits, and critiquing his posture and manner of speech—making him play the part.

But Chai Li wasn’t blind. Every so often he had accompanied his father down to the docks at Wolf Cove to check on shipments, and nearly every time he had snuck away. A whole new world existed outside the icy walls of his father’s estate. The children here ran and played in the streets, often with nothing but snowballs and whale bones. But despite that, they were…open. Happy. They laughed around oil lamps telling thrilling stories, eating muktuk and pilot bread. Their families included not just their blood relatives, but friends, neighbors—and eventually—him, the stranger. They spoke of fishing and hunting trips, and Chai Li realized he had never done these things. He had never had to question or understand where his food came from.

Over time Chai Li came to understand that his family were the outliers, staying holed up in their ice mansion and limiting their associations to only the richest families in the Southern Water Tribe. After he’d learned how the rest of his countrymen lived, his own life began to feel like a lie. He despised the fake greetings and flattery, the fancy clothes, the gifts and symbols of status that passed between the richest families. The frivolity of it all. He despised that they had so much, and yet never seemed to share with their neighbors like the people of Wolf Cove. How cold and artificial the life of nobility seemed after that. He craved community—real community—like he’d experienced when he played with the children by the docks. If only he could repay them for their kindness.

So, it was really no surprise that when one day an undercover agent promised him the means to change the world, his child’s mind had seen an opportunity to become a hero—a real one—like the ones the families by the docks spoke about in their stories. Dai Li would rid the world of war and poverty. In Dai Li’s world, no longer would wealth be hoarded by the few. No longer would the undeserving hold all the power. Chai Li could give back to the people who had shown him such kindness and generosity. He snuck out more—and more and more secret messages were passed to him, telling him to check a warehouse to see what was being stored there, or eavesdrop on a conversation between traders. He would use his position to steal information, right under the noses of the elite. He became an expert liar. Soon, he was climbing the ranks.

But over time, as he saw more and more of the world, he began to realize how horribly naive he had been. Even in places where Dai Li had managed to gain control, things weren’t quite… right. There was no crime. No conflict of any sort. No outside influence. The villagers did their jobs, performing their assigned “roles.” They were model citizens—but it felt…wrong. It was as if they were putting on a show to demonstrate how well off they were—like he was back home, watching some messed up version of the elites’ performatism to the same effect. Chai Li couldn’t help but notice each time Dai Li’s “perfect world” began to overlap with the flawed one he had tried to leave behind. And yet, each time, he bit his tongue. Dai Li knew what he was doing. Dai Li would create a better world.

Chai Li cursed himself. Of course this is what he got for his loyalty. Chai Li wasn’t sure how he would hold up under interrogation, or even torture, at the hands of people specifically trained to extract information from people like him. He didn’t plan on finding out. He just needed to evade capture, and then he could find a safe place to lay low and fade into obscurity. It was too risky to return to the Southern Water Tribe right now.

(♫)

The pounding feet of Lan Tai’s agents were close behind him. Chai Li was smart, not athletic . He figured he only had seconds before one of them raised a wall of stone to block his way. If only he’d been a little more decisive, he could have left on the heels of Syntagma and that Flamer person. They were probably already downstairs trying to fight their way through the guards that Captain Lan Tai had almost certainly left at the exits.

As if on cue, another pair of guards appeared from the stairwell at the end of the curved hallway. They raised their fists, and chunks of marble crumbled free from the floor as they prepared to hurl them towards him.

There was a door on his right. Chai Li pushed off the wall to his left, the extra force allowing him to change his direction without slipping on the smooth floor. The guards behind him overshot, and Chai Li, safely inside the room, slammed the door shut, hands fumbling but somehow managing to find the lock. 

He was in some kind of office, perhaps belonging to a minor Earth Kingdom official. There was a desk, some unfinished paperwork, a few shelves containing records and ledgers…and a window.

That was all he got to take in before the guards began pounding on the door. The wooden barrier wouldn’t hold long against four earthbenders.

Chai Li poked his head out the window, but winced when he saw the drop. Several stories. There were no hand or foot holds, no balconies or overhangs. Just smooth stonework. 

—And a tightly woven rope hanging down from the windows above. Thank the spirits, actually, for Juno and her chiblockers.

He reached for it and, with hardly any hesitation, swung out into the void.

—And then very quickly realized how unprepared he was for this. The chiblockers had made it look easy. How was he actually supposed to go down? He dangled there, feet fumbling for some kind of hold. He ended up planting them against the wall, letting the rope and his arms hold him up. Yes, that seemed right. But now his arms were beginning to burn from the exertion.

He heard splintering wood in the room above him. No time to think about it now. He quickly, but carefully, walked his way down the wall. The guards were shouting and turning over furniture looking for him in the office above. Chai Li made it about halfway before one of them looked out the window and spotted him.

“There!” the guard shouted, pointing. Two more heads appeared on either side of him.

Chai Li moved a little more desperately now. He had gotten the hang of it—moving hand over hand, then both feet, never moving one until the other was firmly planted—but it was still much too slow. If he lost his grip, he’d fall another three stories, at least. Maybe it wouldn’t be enough to kill him instantly, but he would probably wish he were dead after a fall like that.

He kept going, but the burning in his forearms was becoming overwhelming. His hands could barely keep their grip and yet refused to open at his command. He resorted to a slow shuffle, releasing his grip just enough to slide each hand a few inches down the rope at a time. His palms quickly grew raw from the rough fibers.

A pillar of rock shot out of the wall, stopping just short of punching him in the gut, and his feet slipped. In a heartstopping moment, he thought he was dead, but he managed to keep his grip, though his feet now dangled below him.

He looked up at the guards preparing their next attack. They all wore metallic headpieces molded from his father’s jingshen . But Chai Li was out of options. He had to push his luck here.

You don’t want to kill me. Chai Li thought desperately. You need me alive. You can’t interrogate a dead person.

He focused on the center guard, trying to look piteous and wide-eyed. After all, no one had any evidence that Chai Li hadn’t just experienced a world-shattering revelation about his father. Would it be so hard to believe that he had run out of fear? That perhaps he wasn’t in his right mind as he fled? 

He imagined himself as the guard’s conscience, trying to find some seed of mercy in the guard’s heart to pull on. Save me. Save me.

Whether it had been Chai Li’s furious pleading or truly just luck, some spirit must have smiled upon him. A slab of rock jutted out beneath him just as his fatigued arms gave up. The impact, though not as far as if he’d fallen all the way to the ground, still drove all the air from his lungs. 

“Do you have a death wish, boy?” one of the guards spat. “Stay put. One of us will come to get you.”

Chai Li lay on the slab, tangled in rope and gasping. He silently cursed his father for putting him in this situation. Of course his father couldn’t be happy with just being a rich man—he had to be able to bend people to his will, too.

After a few seconds of gasping, he turned his head to see how much progress he’d made. The fall had taken him down another ten or so feet. The ground seemed within reach—maybe three or four times his own height. He was so close, but he didn’t have much time until the guards returned. They would probably come from below, he reasoned, and bend platforms up to him.

That meant if he was still intent on escaping, it had to be now.

The brief rest had returned some strength to his arms. He disentangled himself from the rope and took it in his hands.

“Hey!” the guard above him shouted. “I said stay put!”

Chai Li ignored him and continued his descent hastily. If he could just get low enough to jump—

The rope went slack, and he was falling again. He braced himself, expecting the ground, but instead, another slab of earth caught him just a few feet down. The severed end of the rope fell past him. He cursed, and rolled to look over the edge. It couldn’t be more than two or three times his own height now. Surely he could manage a fall like that.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the first glimpse of guards coming around the corner at ground level. He was out of time.

Swallowing his fear, Chai Li lowered himself over the edge until he was hanging by his fingertips. That should lower the distance to only two times his height, right? He dared look down, and his head spun. Dangling like this, it suddenly seemed a lot farther. He had a thought that maybe he would climb back up after all, but his arms and hands burned with fatigue. He was slipping—there was no going back now.

He let go.

For the first second or two, he thought it was just adrenaline stretching out the time. But by the third second, when he hadn’t broken every bone in his legs, he dared to open his eyes.

His surroundings were stationary for only a moment before the fountain of air holding him up ceased, and he fell the last few feet, bruising his tailbone on the hard ground.

“Are you dumb?” a voice asked. 

Chai Li turned to look. It was the cranky kid from that airbender separatist cult. He couldn’t have been much older than Chai Li, mid-twenties at most. His head was shaved, but the hair was starting to grow back in a light fuzz. No arrows. His robes were a darker orange than was typical for airbenders, nearly Fire Nation red. Chief Klo stood nearby, her indigo furs dusty with the yellow sand that coated the street. Some of her hair had come out of its loops and braids and was cascading around her shoulders. She looked around the street warily.

“Uhh,” Chai Li stammered. Was this really the time to get in an argument about his life choices?

“There!” came a shout. A guard had nearly caught up to them.

While Chai Li was trying to find his balance on shaky, bruised legs, the airbender whipped up a whirlwind that lifted the dust from the ground into the air in an attempt to hide them. Chai Li noted that neither the airbender nor Klo waited for him, electing to dash for the cover of some nearby buildings. So…were they together in this or not? He started running.

The airbender boosted himself onto the roof of a nearby business—or he almost did. He didn’t quite get the height he needed, and so only his top half made it comfortably onto the roof. Now he resembled Chai Li dangling off the side of the Great Hall only moments earlier, his feet scrabbling against the wall. Chai Li didn’t have any obligation (or any way) to help him though, so he kept running, following Klo around the corner and into an alleyway.

They took cover behind some barrels.

“Why are you following me?” Klo hissed.

Chai Li stared. This was the chief of the Water Tribe he was talking to.

“I—why did you run? Don’t you have diplomatic immunity or something?”

Her eyes widened, like this was the first time she’d considered it. “I…panicked.”

“Well, now you certainly look guilty,” Chai Li remarked. He poked his head over the top of one of the barrels. There was some commotion going on in the street, flashes of fire and the sounds of crumbling earth echoing between the buildings, but no one had come looking for them in the alleyway yet.

“Did you really not know your father was a bloodbender?” Klo asked, after a pause.

Chai Li grimaced. “I really didn’t know.”

“How could you not know? He’s your father!”

“Do you know everything that goes on in the North?”

“Of course!”

Chai Li gave her a pointed, challenging stare. To his surprise, it only took her a moment to wilt under it.

“...Most of the time,” she admitted.

“All right,” Chai Li sighed. He had expected the Chief of the Water Tribe to be more…assertive. “Can we mutually agree that Minister Jingcha’s reasons for apprehending us are nonsense?”

“Absolutely.”

“Great. So, how about we—”

A wall of rock shot up at the far end of the alleyway, blocking their escape to the rear. Chai Li and Klo both peeked around the barrels. The crazy firebender, Flamer, had ducked between the buildings in hopes of evading the three Ministry agents on his tail. His already wild hair had begun to come out of its topknot and was hanging down into his face.

It didn’t stop him from noticing the two Water Tribesmen cowering behind the trash though.

“Oh, perfect! Help me out here!” he called, planting himself right in front of them.

To the guards, it must have looked like clear evidence of collusion. Before Chai Li and Klo could protest, the guards descended on them. They went for Flamer, the obvious aggressor, punching towards him with fist-sized clods of earth. The firebender shot back with bursts of flame, but one of the stones caught him in the ribs with a brutal crack. He dropped like—well—a rock.

It was Klo who acted as their saving grace.

“Stop!” she commanded, and to Chai Li’s surprise, the guards hesitated. He seized on their doubt, willing it to grow. “How dare you assault me and—” she glanced at Chai Li. “—my countryman!”

The levitating rocks that had been aimed at them lowered a few inches as the guards exchanged confused glances. Good, good, Chai Li thought, compelling their doubt to swell. But then, he noticed, Klo was also hesitating, her momentum failing almost as soon as it had begun.

“You are on the verge of causing an international incident ,” Chai Li said sharply, hoping Klo would pick up his drift.

“A-apologies, Chief Klo,” the middle guard stammered. “You must understand—we’re only following orders.” He inclined his head toward Flamer. “And that man—”

“—Has obviously experienced some kind of trauma!” Chai Li cut him off.

“Yes,” Klo nodded, trying to follow Chai Li’s lead. “And he will…be granted asylum.”

Chai Li looked for a seed of fear in the center guard’s heart. Do you really want to be the person who causes a lapse in relations between your nations?

“Uh…that is your right, as Chief,” the guard stated. “But, still, you all must come in for questioning, in accordance with Earth Kingdom law.”

“How can you expect me to cooperate when you act like thugs, attacking people on such shaky grounds?” Klo asked.

“—And aren’t there still chiblockers loose?” Chai Li broke in. At the mention, one of the other guards turned to look behind him, where someone else was shouting in the distance. Though the timing of the disturbance had only been coincidence, it worked for Chai Li’s purposes. 

He focused on the guards. That noise was the most important thing in the world right now. After all, it could be a chiblocker. It could be Juno herself. Why waste time on the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe, who would surely see reason eventually, when you could be hailed a hero for bringing in the world’s most wanted criminal? He watched these realizations play out on the guard’s faces.

After a moment, the head guard waved the other two off to go investigate the disturbance, then turned back to the three runaways. “I would appreciate your cooperation, Chief Klo.”

“And I would appreciate not being treated like a criminal!” Klo shot back. The guard shrank a little, and Chai Li tried to amplify his discomfort. Klo seemed to be on the verge of giving herself up and taking advantage of her diplomatic immunity. At least she could afford it. Chai Li couldn’t. He still needed an opening to run. He tugged at the guard’s apprehension about the situation a little more urgently.

His focus was interrupted by Flamer letting out a wet, pained cough. Klo’s eyes darted about, and when she found what she was looking for, she drew her arms back in a long, fluid motion. A stream of water about as thick as Chai Li’s thumb snaked up from a drain further down the alleyway and into her hands. It was green and cloudy, but glowed weakly as it enveloped the waterbender’s hands. She pressed it against Flamer’s chest where the stone had hit him.

“Go find the chiblockers,” she said to the guard without looking up. “I don’t think he’ll be running.”

The guard shuffled awkwardly in place, his eyes scanning each of the three runaways, assessing their likelihood of running.

And then, by some miracle, he turned away and made haste towards where his comrades had gone. Chai Li could hardly believe it had worked. He and Klo both let out relieved sighs.

“...Is he gone?” Flamer asked, raising his head.

Chai Li and Klo exchanged a glance. Neither of them answered.

As if nothing had happened at all, Flamer sprang to his feet and hustled down the alley toward the square. 

“Wait!” Klo called in a hushed tone, trying to avoid drawing attention. “I haven’t finished healing you! You shouldn’t be running around.”

“Eh, I’ll be fine,” Flamer scoffed, waving a hand at her dismissively. “I’ve sustained much worse, lady.”

“ Lady? ”

“Are you coming or what?”

“I—”

Flamer shuffled a little closer. “Look, the Earth Kingdom is always up to something dishonest! Can’t trust any of ‘em. I’m not sticking around to become some kind of bargaining chip and you shouldn’t either! Are you coming or not?”

Chai Li watched the gears turn in Klo’s head. She could cooperate, but that depended on the Earth Kingdom actually respecting her diplomatic immunity. The North had its fair share of political squabbling, and so Chief Klo had her fair share of enemies. Chai Li knew because Dai Li’s agents, of course, had been stoking the flames of political discourse in every government they could infiltrate. It wasn’t hard to imagine political opponents of the current government heads working a shady deal with each other to get what they wanted. 

But Chai Li couldn’t afford to wait around for an answer.

“Let’s go,” he said, joining Flamer.

“Atta boy!” Flamer said, giving him a friendly slap on the back—too hard—that almost knocked the breath out of him again. He didn’t wait for an answer from Klo before running off into the street.

Chai Li followed the firebender out from their hiding spot. No guards yet. They crossed the open cobblestone and ducked behind another building. Klo caught up to them and crouched beside them. She didn’t say anything, and instead wrung her hands worriedly. Maybe she figured she was in too deep to turn back now.

“We need a place to lay low,” Chai Li whispered, scanning the area they had just come from to make sure they hadn’t been seen. “They’ll have checkpoints at all the exits of the city. Any ideas?”

“You there!”

Chai Li jumped at the too-loud voice. Flamer wasn’t next to him anymore.

No, he’d wandered off, and was speaking much too loudly to a barkeeper, who appeared to be trying—and failing—to keep the wild-looking man out of his business. “Let us take shelter in your fine establishment!” Flamer demanded.

Chai Li and Klo hurried over, eager to keep this from turning into a scene. The barkeeper tried to shut the door when he saw the other two approach, but Flamer stuck his foot in the door before he could.

“N-no, I don’t want any trouble,” the barkeeper said with a forced smile. He stuck a broom through the door and prodded at Flamer’s foot. “Please, be on your way. We’re closed.”

“I saw you let that old earthbender in!” Flamer said, grabbing the broom. When the barkeeper pulled back on it, streams of black smoke began to slip out from under Flamer’s palm.

The barkeeper flinched, his grip on the broom wavering. “What earthbender?”

“That old cranky guy!” Flamer insisted. “You know, the one who’s on the run! You’re hiding him! Let us in, or when the guards catch us, I’ll tell them what you did!”

Chai Li hadn’t even seen the old earthbender—Syntagma or whatever his name was—so he couldn’t be sure if the barkeeper was being truthful or not, but the threat seemed to spur plenty of fear in him anyway. Chai Li latched onto that fear and made it swell.

The barkeeper’s eyes flitted toward one end of the street, and then the other. There were no guards to save him—or see him harboring fugitives. He opened the door wider and waved them inside. “Fine. Hurry.”

There was a rush of wind, and then the airbender kid was beside them. Chai Li had no idea where he could have been hiding, except the roof. He must have made it up somehow after all. “Room for one more?”

The barkeeper rolled his eyes. “Why not? Hurry up.”

Once they were all inside, he hurriedly locked the door and windows. With the shutters drawn, the inside was quite dark. Chai Li wrinkled his nose at the damp smell of aged alcohol and stale smoke.

“Aw, Chang, you weren’t supposed to let anyone in!” the old earthbender, Syntagma, chided. He was sitting at a table in the corner, a glass in his hand. “Get them out of here!”

Chang looked between Syntagma and the four new fugitives, who were all giving him some version of a glare, then shook his head nervously.

“Eh? Chang, you do what your father tells you! Kick them out!”

“Why don’t you try to kick me out, huh?” Flamer challenged, marching up to Syntagma. Syntagma stood to meet his gaze, but the firebender was still taller than him by at least half a head.

“Oo-kay, okay! Enough!” the airbender said, running between them and forcing them apart with little bursts of air. “If you get into it here, those guards might hear, and then we’re all done for.”

“This is my hideout!” Syntagma insisted. “You all can leave!”

“If you kick me out, I’m telling the guards where you are!” Flamer said, jabbing a finger at Syntagma. “So I guess you’re stuck with me!”

They held each other’s gaze for a moment, and then Syntagma went back to his seat, grumbling something about needing a stronger drink.

“Can someone please explain what’s going on?” Klo asked. “Syntagma, where are we? Who’s this?”

Syntagma jerked a thumb at the barkeeper, who was still clutching the broom. “That’s Chang, my son—one of ‘em anyway. This is his bar. I was going to hide in the cellar until things calmed down and then slip out the back.”

“Do you really think that will work?” Chai Li asked. “I mean, the rest of us have someplace we could run to, but you’re Earth Kingdom. Won’t the minister just keep searching for you?”

“I dunno,” Syntagma admitted, shrugging. “I was kind of hoping the king would talk some sense into her while I’m gone and have it sorted out by morning.”

“You really think he will?” Chai Li asked with a raised eyebrow. “What was that the minister said about ‘abandoning your king?’”

Even in the dark, he could see the earthbender flush red with anger.

“Why did the minister try to arrest all of us?” the airbender asked before Syntagma could answer. “Do you really think she was making some sort of power play?”

The earthbender threw his hands up in frustration. “All these questions! How should I know? I track money, not people, kid!” 

“It’s Kelsang,” the airbender said. “Not ‘kid.’”

“Okay, Kel-saeng ,” Syntagma sneered, intentionally mispronouncing it. 

“All right, enough!” Klo said, stamping a foot. “We’re all stuck with each other now, so we might as well work together. Let’s try to come up with a plan.”

“I don’t know if I can work with him, ” Syntagma grimaced, looking at Flamer, who glared back.

Klo ignored them, instead turning to Chang and bending forward at the waist in a respectful bow. “I’m sorry for troubling you,” she said, rising up again. “You have my thanks.”

“Oh, it’s…it’s fine,” Chang said, though Chai Li got a strong sense that the barkeeper was beginning to think it was more trouble than it was worth. “I am…simply happy to be visited by my esteemed father.”

Next to him, Chai Li heard Kelsang suppress a groan.

Klo cleared her throat. “And he is lucky to have such a supportive son! I promise we will do our best to keep from causing you any more trouble. Could you show us to your cellar, please?”

Just as Chang was giving an affirmative nod, there was a knock at the door. Everyone froze.

“Police! Open up!” came a gruff voice.

Chai Li’s blood ran cold. 

“C-coming!” Chang called towards the door. He turned back to the others and dropped his voice to a whisper. “This way.”

He ushered them through a door behind the bar. Inside, there was a stove in sore need of a good cleaning, a basin for washing cups and dishes, bags of rice, and a few crates of produce. Chang kicked aside a tattered rug on the far end to reveal a trap door.

“In here,” he said, pulling it open by a small, iron handle. A cold draft wafted up from below, carrying the musty smell of old wood and dust.

Syntagma was first to go down, navigating the stone steps with surprising swiftness and ease for someone of his age.

“Pretty dark,” Flamer said, flicking open his hand to reveal a small flame that illuminated the dark tunnel.

One by one, the rest of them followed. Chai Li was last. He put his hand out to steady himself, letting his fingers brush against the wall as he descended as quickly as he could. Chang quickly closed the trapdoor behind him, and Chai Li could hear his steps across the wooden floor above  as he hurried to answer the officers waiting at the door.

The cellar was dug straight out of the stone, which explained all the dust. Even as he reached the bottom and circled up around Flamer’s light with everyone else, a notable haze hung in the air.

“Do you think they’ll look for us? Or just ask Chang a few questions?” Chai Li asked in a hushed tone.

The group froze as the floorboards above creaked under the weight of several sets of feet. They were definitely searching the place, and it wouldn’t take them long to find the hidden door.

“How did they find us?” Kelsang hissed.

“Everybody stay calm,” Klo said. “Maybe if we come quietly, we can work something out?”

“After fighting and running, they find us all huddled up in the same cellar?” Kelsang pointed out. “I think it’s looking pretty bad for us.”

“Oh, quit your moaning,” Syntagma called from deeper within the cellar. “There’s a tunnel back here. It comes up in the street somewhere. We’ll just slip out before they find us.”

Ignoring the question of why there was a secret tunnel under this bar—Chai Li and the others followed Syntagma’s voice. The rows of shelves and crates bearing carefully bottled drinks imported from around the world eventually came to an end, giving way to bare stone walls.

A few steps into the tunnel, Flamer suddenly stopped, then turned and shoved his way past everyone else going the opposite direction. 

“What are you doing?” Chai Li asked as the firebender brushed past him.

“Making sure they can’t follow us,” Flamer said calmly.

Then, he slung the fire from his hand onto one of the crates of liquor, setting it ablaze. Next to Chai Li, Klo gasped.

“This man is showing us great kindness!” she said, rushing forward and grabbing Flamer’s arm to keep him from throwing another ball of flame into the crates. “You’re destroying his livelihood!”

“Better him than me!” Flamer said, using his other hand to send a stream of fire over a row of crates and shelves. The dry wood took to the flame immediately, and the once-dark cellar was ablaze in the orange light.

“Stop!” Klo cried.

“That should be good,” Flamer said as he pushed a protesting Klo back down the tunnel. “You’ll thank me later! Now go!”

“Come on!” Chai Li said, grabbing her arm and pulling her along with him. Look at him—manhandling the leader of the Water Tribe. He really would be lucky to make it out of this…

After a while of running, he let go of her arm. This tunnel was surprisingly long. The heat from the fire had long since faded, and the light, too, was beginning to vanish. What on earth does he use this for? Chai Li wondered. Taking in shipments too big to fit through the cellar door, maybe? Or did he often use it to let certain guests in and out discreetly? Maybe the bar had once been something else?

Eventually, Syntagma came to a halt ahead of them. Flamer held up his handful of flame to illuminate the surroundings. The tunnel had ended. An iron ladder was bolted into the wall here, ascending upward and ending abruptly beneath an oddly large, square brick.

Syntagma placed a finger to his lips in an indication of silence, then began to make his way up the ladder. When he reached the top, he used one hand to slowly levitate the square brick out of its setting. Daylight spilled in around the cracks.

Then, Syntagma let out a curse, and daylight flooded the tunnel as the brick was tossed aside. Chai Li held up a hand against the blinding light.

“Syntagma!” came the cheerful voice of Captain Lan Tai. A pair of hands grabbed Syntagma by the shoulders and hoisted him, kicking and thrashing, out of the hole. “Good to see you!”

Then, a face appeared in the hole, backlit by the sun.

“Oh? And friends!” Captain Lan Tai said smiling. “I just have…a few questions for you all.”

Chapter Text

Chai Li couldn’t be sure how much time passed, exactly. The cell he’d been shoved into was windowless, and other than the occasional passing of a guard patrol, there was no way to determine any amount of time had passed at all. The Winter Conclave had almost certainly ended by now. He and his fellow fugitives had been separated, no doubt to prevent them from corroborating on their story—not that there was much to tell, anyway. Their cooperation had been mere happenstance, after all.

The interrogation had been…basic. Looking back on it, Chai Li didn’t know what he’d been so worried about. It wasn’t even Captain Lan Tai who had interrogated him. They asked him if he’d known about his father’s activities. If he’d known his father was a bloodbender. Why he’d run. He stuck to his story. Only the answer to the last question had been a lie. They had no reason to suspect he was working for Dai Li.

He leaned his head back against the musty wall, his wolf’s tail cushioning his skull from the hard stone. He hated to admit it, but this situation actually had him questioning his life choices. Chai Li had jumped out a window and risked his neck just to bring back some notes on the Winter Conclave for Dai Li, with no guarantee that any of the information would actually be useful. And for what? How was this contributing to this “new world” Dai Li promised? What difference did it make to the plan? 

How horribly naive he’d been. His brush with death as he dangled off the side of the building must have injected some clarity into his brain. What was stopping him from engaging in altruistic behavior on his own? Now that his father was most likely going to prison, whatever assets weren’t seized by the authorities would fall to him, and he could do whatever he wanted with them. He could make his difference and not worry about what he was being used for.

He hissed out a curse. Maybe he didn’t need Dai Li. But could he risk leaving and making himself an enemy?

Hours passed. Finally, a guard appeared at his cell door.

“Come with me,” he said.

The guard led him from his cell to a little conference room in a different wing of the prison. The other fugitives were waiting with guards of their own. They didn’t look like they’d been beaten or tortured—at least not any more than they had been in their initial escape attempts. Like him, all their rists had been shackled—standard procedure, especially for benders.

Good thing Chai Li didn’t need his hands to bend.

They waited in silence until, finally, Captain Lan Tai returned.

Chai Li braced himself for the worst. A death sentence? Life in prison? Had they somehow deduced he was working for Dai Li? And what about the others, who he was fairly sure were innocent on that count? 

—Though, he could never be quite sure. Dai Li had agents from every nation.

He tried to read Captain Lan Tai’s featureless expression, but it gave him nothing. No doubt the man had been trained to leave opposing mindbenders nothing to push or pull on, and the jingshen encircling his head didn’t help either, of course.

The captain stared at them for a long moment, then clapped his hands together—

—And broke into a wide smile.

“My friends!” he rejoiced, arms extended into a friendly greeting. “I have great news!”

You’re letting us go? Would be the obvious question, Chai Li thought, but kept his mouth shut. The others, wisely, did the same, as if fearing their voices might change the outcome. They all waited for the “great news.”

“We no longer have reason to believe you to be working with Juno,” the captain said, scanning the faces of the prisoners. A couple of them let out sighs of relief. “Namely because—well—we believe Minister Jingcha was merely mindbent to suspect you—”

“Mindbent?” Syntagma asked incredulously. “She really must have messed up if that’s the excuse you’re using. Mindbenders aren’t a thing anymore.”

Chai Li tried to keep his expression as blank as possible. How would a person who didn’t believe mindbenders were still around react?

“Ohhh, Syntagma,” Captain Lan Tai said, shaking his head. “Mindbenders are very much still a thing. Don’t you know where you are?”

“In the…provincial detention facility?” the earthbender replied, an eyebrow raised.

“Yes—but no,” the captain answered with a smug smile. “This is the headquarters of the League Against Mindbenders! My task force is—tasked—with apprehending benders with strange abilities, like Dai Li’s agents. We—”

“Didn’t Dai Li die—what—ten years ago?” Kelsang broke in. “These days he’s just some bogeyman parents in the Earth Kingdom use to keep their kids in line.”

Captain Lan Tai let out an exasperated sigh, clearly trying to maintain his patience. “Yes, son, Dai Li was killed in his violent attempt to take over Ba Sing Se ten years ago. Unfortunately, though the man himself is dead, his splinter cells remain. You saw one of them today, actually.”

“Juno?”

“Yes—his daughter.”

Chai Li did his best to look like he was hearing all this information for the first time. 

When this revelation didn’t have the expected impact on his audience, Captain Lan Tai continued. “Anyway, we’ve long suspected Juno to be a mindbender. It’s natural, after all, that Dai Li’s daughter would inherit his bending prowess. She’s clearly picked up the mantle in the wake of his death.”

“Well—what does she want?” Syntagma asked.

To Chai Li’s surprise, Captain Lan Tai shrugged. “A new world order? Where Dai Li sought to rid the world of its supposedly ‘corrupt’ leaders and mindbend dissenters into submission, Juno appears to be doing much the same thing. She’s never come out with a specific declaration of her intentions—although I suppose this latest incident sends a pretty clear message. Kaido was a warning. World leaders are now her targets. She’s judged them no longer fit to rule. Who is fit to rule, though—she’s never given any indication who she’d rather see as heads of governments. If she gets her way, we have no idea what chaos may await us.”

Next to him, Chai Li felt Klo shrink into herself. Of course, such a warning would hit her more personally than the rest of them.

“That brings me to my next point!” the captain declared. “My task force put on an embarrassing performance today. Absolutely atrocious. Mindbenders infiltrating our ranks, world leaders assaulted, the Minister incapacitated. There might as well have been no security at all. So—I think I’m in need of some new recruits.”

“Ugh,” Syntagma groaned. “You’ve got to be joking. ” 

“You…want us to join your task force?” Kelsang asked.

“Of course!” Captain Lan Tai confirmed. “Most of you are benders. You all managed to hold your own against Juno and evade capture from trained agents. I think you’d do quite well.”

“No offense, Captain,” Klo began, “But I’m the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe. I don’t think acting subordinate to an Earth Kingdom ministry is appropriate for me.”

“Oh, no,” Captain Lan Tai said, trying to wave off the notion with a shake of his hands. “Not subordinate. You’d be a joint task force! Hired independently of any obligation of service to the Earth Kingdom.”

“So we’d be…mercenaries?” Chai Li finally found a natural place to chime in. This might not be so bad. He could spy on the Ministry of Public Safety—the League—from within. He could suddenly find himself privy to invaluable information to send back to Dai Li. Then, maybe, this would all be worth it.

“You make it sound so crass,” the Captain muttered. “You would be fairly compensated.”

“I only serve the Fire Lord!” Flamer declared. “What does he think about this?”

“He wants to see Juno brought to justice, of course.”

“So—you just want us to chase down this Juno girl? That’s it?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“And—what if I don’t want to?” Syntagma grumbled. “I’m a bit old for all this running and fighting, you know.”

“Well—ehehe,” the captain shrugged casually. “We haven’t gotten to discussing your other crimes yet. In your case, there’s abandoning your post, resisting arrest, assaulting an officer, aiding and abetting fugitives, arson, attempted bribery of the agents guarding your cell—”

“Wait, the arson was him!” Syntagma blurted out, gesturing at Flamer.

“Is that a…confession?” the captain asked, grinning.

“Wait—” Kelsang broke in. “So, do we actually get anything for finding Juno for you, or is this just how we ‘atone’ for our ‘crimes’?”

It made sense, Chai Li thought. They had caused quite a scene, fighting and fleeing in the middle of the conclave like that. Captain Lan Tai probably thought he was offering them an opportunity to save some face here, especially in Klo’s case. At least, as a “joint” task force, it could look like a cooperative effort instead of a punishment.

“I suppose you could call it atonement,” Captain Lan Tai said. “But actual payment isn’t out of the question. She is the most wanted criminal in the world, after all. I’m sure all four nations would be willing to pitch in for a reward. What would you want?”

“Diplomatic recognition for the Central Air Temple,” Kelsang said without hesitation. “No monetary compensation necessary.”

“Uhh, I would like the money, actually,” Syntagma said quickly.

“A statue!” Flamer chimed in.

“Okay, okay—” the captain held up a hand for silence, clearly not expecting everyone to begin throwing out their desired compensation immediately. “We can discuss compensation later. Shall I consider you all on board?”

They all gave their affirmations, except for Klo.

“I don’t think I should be away from the North Pole for too long,” she said. 

“Oh, that’s a shame,” Captain Lan Tai said with a shake of his head. “I had hoped atoning for your crimes this way would be less embarrassing for you than serving your time like a peasant.”

Klo stared at him, gobsmacked. “Excuse me?”

But the implication of his words was crystal clear. There was no diplomatic immunity here.

“Chairman Fondui agreed you shouldn’t be away for too long,” he said. “I suspect it would be in your best interest to find Juno quickly, in that case.” 

Chai Li couldn’t help but wonder how Lan Tai planned to keep Klo from simply returning to the North Pole immediately instead of going after Juno, but held his tongue. Maybe it had something to do with this Fondui person, whoever they were. Indeed, the name itself seemed to bear substantial threat to Klo. With the way she averted her eyes, her jaw clenched, Chai Li could only assume that what Captain Lan Tai had just said was akin to blackmail.

“So, are you in?”

After a pause, she nodded silently.

“Great!” Captain Lan Tai exclaimed, clasping his hands together. “I’ve had quarters prepped for all of you. Please, if you would—follow me.”

—

♫

They ended up having a suite on the second floor of a nearby building to themselves. They each got their own room, connected by a common area with a basic kitchen and shared bathroom. The rest of the floor was made up of similar suites. The League had also brought them changes of clothes, rations, simple weapons, and other traveling supplies to dole out between themselves.

“Rest up,” Captain Lan Tai had told them. “And think about where you’re going to start your search. I expect to hear a plan from you in the morning.”

The group spent some time dividing up supplies, nursing wounds, and cleaning up, but decided to figure out the plan in the morning.

Chai Li now lay in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

The day had given him a lot to think about. Something about the way Captain Lan Tai had coerced the lot of them seemed overly familiar. Chai Li hadn’t been able to place it in the moment, but now, as he lay in bed reflecting, it hit him.

It reminded him of Dai Li.

Not so much the coercion itself—Dai Li was usually a bit more subtle than that—but the way the Captain held himself. His manner of speech. The self-righteous tone. The sense that, despite the obvious unfairness of it all, he genuinely believed he was in the right. 

It was uncomfortable, Chai Li found, to be on the other side of that dynamic.

Now that there was some distance between them, Chai Li found himself wondering if Dai Li’s intentions had always seemed so selfless only because Chai Li had never been on the other side of it. Maybe Chai Li had only been mindbent to see the necessity of Dai Li’s actions. The rosy lens he had always seen Dai Li through was becoming murkier and murkier…

And—did he really need Dai Li? With the financial power of his father’s estate and his own powers of persuasion, maybe he didn’t…

A floorboard in the hallway let out a slow creak. Probably one of the others going to the bathroom, Chai Li thought, brushing it off.

He turned his head to gaze up at the sky through the window. The full moon shone down on him, casting a pale, ghostly glow across his bed.

Another creak, and then a faint shuffling, like someone was settling down outside his door to eavesdrop.

He slowly reached for the knife tucked into the utility belt by his bedside. Then, as quietly as he could, he made his way toward the door.

By the time he got there, the sound had stopped. He paused to listen, thinking maybe if he was quiet enough, he would hear the faint sound of breathing, or maybe even someone else’s racing heart—but it was silent. His fingers closed around the hilt of the knife, and he flung the door open—

—But there was nothing.

Was he going crazy?

The hallway was illuminated by the faint light of the moon shining in through the window at the end. The hallway was empty, but by the moonlight, he could see all the way down the hall into the common area. Across the suite, the doorway that led from the common area to the outdoor walkway beyond—the door that should have been locked —was ever so slightly ajar…and as Chai Li watched it, it slowly drifted shut.

Someone had been here.

Chai Li snuck out of his room, treading lightly across the floor. He managed to avoid the creaky floorboard that had alerted him to the intruder’s presence and made his way into the common area. As far as he could tell, nothing had been stolen. So then, who had been here, and why?

Only one way to find out.

He went to the door and slowly nudged it open. He couldn’t see anyone on the walkway from here, just the row of doors leading to the other suites on one side, and the moonwashed city beyond the railing on the other. He slipped out, letting the door close behind him. Maybe the person had gone around the corner, towards the stairs? He clutched his knife tightly and made his way over.

When he got to the stairs, they were empty too. This was the only stairwell. If there had been someone, they were already gone. Or, maybe Chai Li really was going crazy.

Pain suddenly shot through his hand and up his arm as the limb was twisted from behind, forcing him to release the knife. He spun around looking for the attacker, but was too slow. His assailant mirrored his movements, evading his eyes as if taking the place of his own shadow. Another pain shot up his arm. Was he stabbed? No, it had been a blunt blow, but the hot pain quickly faded to numbness. He lashed out wildly, but found only air, while his assailant found their marks on his other side. A second later, a hot weight pressed him into the wall, and he tried to cry out, only to find a gloved hand clapped over his mouth and a cold blade pressed against his throat.

Now, backlit by the moon, the attacker showed her face.

“H-eee-y, Chai,” Juno said in the same sing-song tone she’d used on his father. “Just the person I was hoping to see.”

He tried to move his arms, but they only tingled numbly.

“Don’t worry, I just want to talk,” she said, but she pressed the knife deeper, causing it to bite into the skin of Chai Li’s throat. “—But if you scream, I’ll have to cut out those vocal cords of yours.”

She let the words sink in for a moment, holding his gaze, then slowly pulled her hand away from his mouth, electing instead to press her forearm across his collarbone to hold him in place.

“Talk—about what?” Chai Li asked hoarsely.

“Your future!” Juno said with a smirk. “You see, any time I find one of Dai Li’s agents, I propose the same deal to them. Tell me what you know about Dai Li’s big plan, and then join me in stopping it. Or—”

A trickle of blood began to run down Chai Li’s neck.

“—I kill you.”

Faced with the prospect of immediate death, Chai Li panicked. Frankly, at this very moment, he wasn’t sure whether his allegiances lay with Dai Li—or himself. He tried to reach into Juno’s mind—plant the idea that, actually, she had the wrong person, and she needed to let him go.

He saw her dark eyes dilate briefly—the telltale sign of a person under a mindbender’s hold—the lighter edges of her irises becoming a thin ring. But it was only for a moment. She blinked, and her eyes returned to normal.

“Oh?” she chuckled. “I felt a tickle there. But, you’re not very good. I expected better from Dai Li’s number two.”

Chai Li’s eyes went wide, and Juno stifled a quiet laugh.

“Yes, yes, I know who you are!” she said. “I’m Dai Li’s daughter. He’s not the only master of espionage.”

“What do you want?” Chai Li whispered through gritted teeth.

“I told you exactly what I want,” Juno said. “I discovered recently that Dai Li’s still alive. I also know he’s planning something to take place at the South Pole on the summer—really their winter— solstice. I would very much like to know what.”

Chai Li found himself shaking his head. Right, the plan. Dai Li was very insistent that he needed control of the South Pole, and that his plan had to take place on a very specific day—the solstice—six months from now. But all the details—why the South and not the North, why the South’s winter and not summer solstice, and what, exactly, Dai Li needed the Spirit Portal for, if anything—Chai Li genuinely didn’t know. Those parts of the plan were for Dai Li’s eyes only.

“I—I don’t know—” he stammered.

Juno pressed into him harder.

“I only know what I need to know!” Chai Li asserted. He had a distinct feeling that she was enjoying his terror. “Dai Li only gives the details to those who need to know.”

“Hmm,” Juno hummed skeptically. “And you, the right hand man, don’t need to know those details?”

Chai Li was silent. She had a point. He could understand Dai Li wanting to keep certain details to himself, but as he thought about it, Chai Li realized he knew surprisingly little about Dai Li’s plans. Why didn’t Dai Li trust him with that information?

“Chai. Li. Dong.” Juno tapped the tip of the knife against his throat impatiently with each syllable. “Let me ask you this: did you know your father was a bloodbender?”

Chai Li hesitated. “N-no. I didn’t.”

Tap, tap, tap, went the knife. Juno said nothing, and so Chai Li kept talking.

“I feel like I should have known. He was always selfish and cutthroat. Maybe if I had known, I could have done something.”

The tapping stopped.

“Why do you follow Dai Li?” Juno asked suddenly.

“Uh—” He found himself hesitating again. “Because—because I want to help people,” he said hurriedly. “My father only ever cared about himself.”

“Interesting,” Juno mused. “Tell me this, then: How would it make you feel if I told you that your father’s ships made numerous unrecorded stops at ports crawling with Dai Li’s agents?”

“I—” Chai Li blinked. Secret stops at Dai Li’s ports? That meant…Dai Li knew his father. And more than likely, knew what he was.

Juno, surely seeing the gears turning in Chai Li’s head, smiled.

“Ah, yes,” she said. “Amazing what a man working for the ‘greater good’ is willing to ignore to have control of the world’s jingshen .”

Of course. If Dai Li controlled Kaido, he could greatly limit the Four Nations’ abilities to oppose him. But then, why keep it a secret from Chai Li? Surely he would have been in the best position to manipulate his own father?

“Why didn’t Dai Li say anything?” The words fell out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“I’d imagine he felt you wouldn’t approve,” Juno shrugged.

He’d have been right, Chai Li thought, clenching his teeth. His father was exactly the kind of person Dai Li was supposed to be fighting against.

“Maybe there’s something else you should know,” Juno continued, her expression serious. “Chai Li, does your family have a history of bloodbending?”

“N…no,” Chai Li said, blinking. “Not that I know of.”

“So then—where do you think Kaido learned it?”

Where would he even start? Bloodbending was a deeply taboo art. No person with a decent reputation would ever admit to having attempted it. Likewise, no person with a decent reputation would risk sullying it by asking about for a teacher. More likely was someone else approaching him, offering to teach it in exchange for something else. 

Chai Li’s heart dropped.

“No…” he breathed. “Dai Li isn’t a bloodbender.”

Juno smiled grimly. “In his huge web of secret connections, you think Dai Li doesn’t know a single bloodbender?”

He didn’t want it to be true, but deep down, Chai Li was sure it was. It made too much sense not to. Dai Li needed to control the only substance capable of resisting mindbending, so he offered power to the person with the monopoly on it, no doubt in exchange for Kaido’s assurances he would only sell to people who couldn’t threaten Dai Li. Maybe even have Kaido sabotage his own products—which would certainly explain why Chai Li had been able to mindbend the League’s goons. The artificial scarcity would drive up prices, further lining Kaido’s pockets. It was mutually beneficial, if morally reprehensible.

Then, Chai Li had half a thought that Juno might be messing with him. Could she be mindbending him to lose faith in Dai Li? But nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

And then—the faintest brush of…something. A presence, like a shadow. The briefest touching of minds but—nothing taken, and nothing left behind.

He managed to form words again. “Did you mindbend me?”

“No,” Juno said flatly. “I happen to believe that this is the sort of decision that needs to be completely your own.” 

“Then, what did I feel just now?”

“Me, checking you for deceitful intentions.”

Oh, but that doesn’t count? Chai Li thought bitterly.

“Did you—mindbend Minister Jingcha?” he forced himself to ask.

Juno smiled. “I might have.”

“Why?”

“I needed you all in one place?”

Chai Li stared. “...Why?”

At this, Juno’s smile faded. “You’re hardly in a place to demand answers.”

“Fair,” Chai Li said, gulping down his fear.

“So then, Chai Li Dong, what will it be?” Juno asked. “I don’t have all night.”

To Chai Li’s surprise, the answer came easy. Why should he die for Dai Li, who didn’t even trust him enough to tell him the whole plan? Who kept secrets about his father? What else had he kept from him knowing he wouldn’t approve? 

“I want answers—” he said, surprising himself with the calmness of his own voice. “—About Dai Li.”

Juno held his gaze, and after a long moment, she pulled back the knife from his throat.

“Wise choice,” she said. “I admit, I don’t like the idea of killing you if you don’t even know what you’re dying for. But—” She leveled the tip of the knife at him again. “—Don’t make me regret sparing you. Show me I can trust you. So—bring those buffoons in the other room to me. Figure yourself out. And next time you see me, we’ll talk.”

She gave him one last authoritative shove, and then pushed off of him, leaving him free, but numb-armed. He tried to massage some feeling back into his forearms, but found he still couldn’t feel his fingers. When he shot a wary glance at Juno, he caught her rolling her eyes at him.\

“Next time I see you?” Chai Li asked. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me when that will be?”

Juno raised an eyebrow, as if the answer was obvious. “Weren’t you hired to find me? Come on , Chai.”

Chai Li couldn’t do anything but shake his head as if he were a helpless child. Everything was happening too fast.

Juno sighed, then reached into her pocket. She pulled out a strip of fabric—colorless in the gray wash of the moonlight—and thrust it into his face tauntingly. “You know where to find me.”

He didn’t. A strip of fabric, really? “What’s this?”

Juno had finally had enough, and this time, her sigh turned into a groan. She took Chai Li by his numb hands, placed the frayed strip of fabric into one, and the knife she’d stolen into the other. Then, she leaped onto the safety rail, balancing there like a cat.

“Ask your airbender friend,” she said with a mischievous smile, and then she dropped off the rail with the grace of a gymnast. Gone.

Chai Li stared at the two items in his hands, and then hurried back to the suite. He fumbled to open the door and stumbled inside, surely making enough noise to wake everyone else in the process. He needed light—real light. By the light of the moon, he rifled through the supplies that had been haphazardly cast about the common area, until he found a set of spark rocks. He grabbed them, the sharp edges nicking his numb fingers, and struck them over an oil lamp in the corner. A spark finally found its mark, and the room was illuminated with the soft orange light of flame. In this light, at least, color was slightly more clear. There was the ocean blue of his tunic, the green seal of the Earth Kingdom on their supplies…

And the strip of fabric that Juno had given him—a deep orange, nearly Fire Nation red.

Chapter Text

Needless to say, it simply wasn’t Chai Li’s night, in terms of getting sleep. After some scolding by Syntagma for making too much noise in the common area, he had apologized sheepishly and slunk back to his room, being careful to hide the strip of fabric from the older man’s sight. Then, despite his best efforts to sleep, he had spent the majority of the night trying to figure out how much to tell the rest of the group in the morning.

The sunrise came before he fully figured it out.

“All right,” Klo said, taking the lead on the planning. They had all gathered around the table in the common area, a world map spread out on its surface. “I don’t suppose anyone has any ideas about where to start?”

Chai Li found his eyes drifting towards Kelsang, but the airbender said nothing, his gray eyes studying the map, oblivious to Chai Li’s stare.

“How are we supposed to have any idea where Juno is?” Syntagma grumbled. “This is a pointless pony show to make people think the Four Nations are actually doing something after that embarrassing display yesterday. We’re not actually going to find her.”

“Even if it’s just for show, we still have to try,” Kelsang said. “This is our ‘punishment,’ after all. Might as well play along.”

“Oh?” Syntagma said. “So where do you think we should start?”

Kelsang offered a noncommittal shrug. “The Captain didn’t exactly give us much to work with.”

It was clear the League was—well— out of their league… when it came to finding Juno. Captain Lan Tai had written down a few places where people claimed to have seen Juno recently, but it was hardly helpful. There was no guarantee she would actually return to any of these places. And—they were all over the place. Islands in the Fire Nation, sightings in Agna Qel’a in the Northern Water Tribe, Gaoling, Makapu, Bin-er… The list went on with sightings in every nation—

No, not every nation, Chai Li realized. None of the Air Temples were on the list…

The strip of fabric practically burned in Chai Li’s pocket. 

Ask your airbender friend.

Well, there was certainly no way to broach this subject with the airbender without explaining how exactly that strip of orange fabric had made its way into Chai Li’s hands. If Chai Li wanted to know what Dai Li was keeping from him, he had to find Juno, and to find Juno, he had to get Kelsang to start talking.

For once, the truth seemed to be Chai Li’s only way to get what he wanted.

“I…need to confess something,” Chai Li started. All eyes at the table suddenly turned to him, and anxiety began to burn in his stomach like stinging nettle. “Last night, Juno was here.”

There was silence as everyone else stared, wondering if they’d heard him correctly.

“Here?” Klo asked. “What do you mean?”

“She was here,” Chai Li repeated. “All that noise last night—she was here to…well, I think she came to kill me honestly.”

“Because of Kaido?” Kelsang asked.

“No—” Chai Li started, and then realized that—actually—that might be a valid reason for Juno to come after him, and maybe he didn’t have to out himself as a Dai Li agent after all, but the word had already left his mouth.

He took a deep breath.

“It’s because…I’m working for Dai Li.”

Across from him, Kelsang raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Dai Li? Dai Li’s dead.”

“No,” Chai Li said. “No he isn’t.”

The airbender continued to stare at him. “Okay, let’s assume for a minute that Dai Li isn’t dead. Why would you tell us this?”

“Because I need you to trust me,” Chai Li said shakily. “This is bigger than just us and Juno.”

“What are you trying to say, Chai Li?” Klo asked, trying to keep them on topic. “Why would Juno come after you?”

“Yeah,” Syntagma broke in. “Captain Lan Tai said she was carrying on Dai Li’s work.”

“Juno left the Dai Li a long time ago. She’s been a thorn in our side for ages,” Chai Li said. “Dai Li’s alive and he’s planning…something. This is going to sound stupid, but I don’t know what . For whatever reason, I’ve been excluded from the details of this big plan of his. All I know is it has something to do with the spirit portal at the South Pole and the southern winter solstice. But that’s not all he’s kept from me. Juno thinks Dai Li may have put my father in contact with someone to teach him bloodbending, and for some reason Dai Li didn’t see fit to tell me that either. Probably because he knew I wouldn’t approve. I’ve been…losing faith in Dai Li for a while.”

He paused to look around the group. Kelsang still wore that same cynical expression. Klo looked genuinely concerned. Syntagma and Flamer wore an expression closer to neutral, as if they were still forming an opinion on what he was saying.

“Anyway,” he continued. “I want answers about Dai Li, and I think Juno has them.”

“So, Dai Li’s alive,” Klo started, her tone still light, as if this was all a hypothetical. “And you work for him, but you don’t know his plan? This is…quite hard to believe, you know, especially without any evidence.”

“Yeah,” Syntagma agreed. “So you work for the dead criminal mastermind who tried to take over the Earth Kingdom ten years ago? Sure, buddy.”

“I’m telling the truth!” For once, Chai Li thought. His throat tightened. How come it was proving so much harder to make people believe the truth than a lie? “I know it sounds hard to believe, but I need you to trust me. Remember what happened to Ba Sing Se? Mass bombings? Huge numbers of civilian casualties? Dai Li was so sure that the world would come out better for it that the collateral damage didn’t matter to him. And all I know about Dai Li’s next plan is it might have something to do with spirits who have already threatened to wipe us out in recent memory. You all forget—we don’t have the Avatar to save us anymore. You have to trust me.”

“You still haven’t offered any evidence of Dai Li being alive,” Kelsang pointed out.

Chai Li responded with a frustrated sigh. “Think about it—why would Juno let Kaido live, but try to kill me?”

“Well, you don’t have any bending to take away,” Kelsang said. “Your life is the next best thing to hold over your head.”

“Yes, exactly,” Chai Li said, thankful, at least, that no one suspected him of being a bender yet. Kelsang met his sudden agreeableness with a look of surprise. “Why would she threaten me if she had nothing to gain from it? She wants to find Dai Li, and she assumed I would know where he is.”

He could see the gears turning in the airbender’s head. Chai Li had correctly pegged him as a man of logic.

“So then, what proof do you have that Juno was actually here last night?” Kelsang asked, walking right into the trap.

Chai Li held up the strip of red-orange fabric.

No one else at the table seemed to understand the significance of it, simply looking between Chai Li and the fabric, wondering what they were missing. But not Kelsang. His eyes went wide with recognition, and then he quickly clamped down on it, trying to match the confusion of the others.

“And…what’s that?” Kelsang asked, a waver creeping into his voice.

“Juno told me to ask my airbender friend,” Chai Li said smugly.

All eyes turned to Kelsang now, as the others made the connection between the color of the fabric and the airbender’s robes.

“It…must have ripped off during the fight yesterday,” Kelsang said quickly.

“But why would Juno give it to me and tell me to ask you about it?”

“You could have just found it on the ground! That doesn’t prove Juno was here!”

“How about this cut on my neck from when she had a knife to my throat?”

“Kelsang—” Klo broke in. “Do you know where Juno is?”

“No,” Kelsang said. “I don’t.”

But the airbender was a poor liar, Chai Li noted. As soon as he’d answered, he looked away—a clear tell. Airbenders, for all their virtues, valued honesty. Kelsang couldn’t even look Klo in the eye when lying to her.

“I don’t believe you,” Chai Li said flatly.

“I don’t know what else to tell you,” Kelsang remarked, crossing his arms. He sank down in his seat a little, like he was trying to hide himself from the prying eyes of the group.

“Kelsang,” Klo studied him. “What are you not telling us?”

“There isn’t anything to tell you.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No.”

The airbender’s eyes flitted about the group, as if he were hoping someone else would change the subject. But everyone continued to look at him expectantly.

“Ugh,” Flamer groaned. “Just spit it out, kid.”

After another uncomfortably long moment of silence, the airbender finally folded under the pressure. He let out an exasperated sigh.

“Juno and I are…acquainted,” he said simply.

“So you do know where she is,” Klo concluded.

“I knew it!” Syntagma blurted out. “I knew there was a reason you cultists are so secretive!”

“He probably doesn’t want to sell her out,” Flamer mused.

“We’re not friends,” Kelsang clarified. “Not by a long shot.”

“So then why keep her location a secret?” Klo asked.

The airbender considered the question for a moment before answering. “Because I don’t…entirely disagree with what she’s doing.”\

“So, you are protecting her!” Flamer declared, as if he’d solved the big mystery. Kelsang shot him a glare.

“Why did you agree to join the hunt for her then?” Chai Li asked, genuinely curious.

Kelsang frowned. “This time was a bit much,” he admitted. “I don’t think the nations can be trusted to prosecute their own, especially when the people who need to be brought to justice are as esteemed as the Fire Prince. But an attack on the Winter Conclave? It was a bit too far.” He tapped a finger on the table absentmindedly. “But to be honest—I hadn’t decided if I was going to follow through with apprehending her. I still have some qualms about it.”

He continued to tap on the table until he noticed it was the only sound filling the silence, then stopped.

“Enough about my secrets,” he said bitterly. Then he turned an accusing eye towards Klo. “I think it’s someone else’s turn.”

“What?” Klo gaped.

“Chai Li and I aren’t the only one’s keeping secrets,” he said. “Maybe you would like to explain that little acknowledgement Juno gave you before you started running?”

“That was just something the minister misrepresented to cast me as guilty,” Klo said, but like Kelsang, she had a hard time keeping eye contact when she lied.

“We’ve already got a Dai Li agent and a Juno sympathizer,” Chai Li said encouragingly. “You’re in good company.”

They waited. She folded even quicker than Kelsang.

“I might have…enlisted her help in the past,” Klo admitted.

“So you’ve been colluding with the criminal!” Syntagma said accusingly.

“Enlisted her help how?” Chai Li asked.

“There’s been a lot of unrest in the North,” Klo said with a sigh. “I asked her to take the bending of some troublemakers and…a few other things.”

“—Like?” Kelsang prompted.

“Train our nonbending defense force in chiblocking,” Klo said. “I guess you could say…I didn’t entirely disagree with her ideology either.”

That was three of the five of them with a connection to Juno now. Juno’s words continued to echo around Chai Li’s mind. I needed you all in one place.

“Okay,” Chai Li said, turning to Flamer and Syntagma with a knowing look. “How do you two know Juno?”

“I saved her from the Spirit World!” Flamer said without missing a beat. “Wasn’t she lucky I was there to show her—”

“Right,” Chai Li said, holding up a hand for silence. “I’m going to cut you off there.” They were going to be stuck here for hours if he let Flamer go on. He was content, for now, to accept that there must be a little truth to the idea that Flamer and Juno had indeed met somewhere around one of the spirit portals, but figured he would have to get the accurate account of the tale from Juno later on. “Syntagma?”

“Uhhh,” the old man started, his air of superiority disappearing now that it was his turn to be scrutinized. “She took one of my sons’ bending. I witnessed it, but we didn’t talk or anything. I wasn’t even mad about it, honestly.”

“Really?”

Syntagma shrugged. “I figure if my son was dumb enough to get caught, he probably deserved it.”

“Caught doing…what?” Chai Li asked.

“That’s not important!” Syntagma said, waving a hand as if it were no big deal, and then he quickly changed the subject. “Anyway, you guys aren’t getting cold feet on this Juno hunt are you? I still want that reward.”

“That’s the thing,” Chai Li said. “She wants us to find her. Whatever Dai Li’s planning, she needs help stopping it. And she knows all of us in some way. She told me to bring you to her.”

He held up the strip of orange fabric again. This time, Kelsang seemed to force himself to look at it. “So, airbender. Where is she?”

Kelsang narrowed his eyes. “How do we know this Dai Li thing is really so urgent that Juno needs us? We don’t even know what we’re up against.”

“I guess you’ll just have to ask her when we find her.”

“Personally, I’d like some answers,” Klo agreed. “I have to take care of my tribe. If some of the recent unrest has been caused by Dai Li’s agents, I want to put a stop to it.”

“Worst case,” Chai Li suggested, “We find her, and after talking to her, we can decide what to do. Captain Lan Tai and Minister Jingcha are still expecting us to go after her. We have to play the part, at least initially.”

“Agreed,” Klo nodded. “Will you tell us, Kelsang? Please?”

The airbender finally caved. With a sigh, he reached for the map and pointed to an island in the far east of the Fire Archipelago. “If she’s telling you to ask me, then that probably means she’s going back to the Central Air Temple.”

“Ugh,” Syntagma grunted. “Is that where you cultists hang out now that the other airbenders kicked you out?”

“It’s not a cult,” Kelsang grumbled, narrowing his eyes.

“Don’t you worship a dragon or something?”

“Let’s stay on topic, please,” Klo interrupted. “Is that the only place?”

“That’s where her main hideout is, currently,” Kelsang said, still glaring at Syntagma. “We share the island. We don’t bother her, she doesn’t bother us. I don’t know where her other hideouts are. Like I said, we aren’t exactly friends.”

“That’s a good place to start,” Klo said. “If she isn’t there, I could send a message to a confidant in the North to see if she’s been spotted there recently. So, I guess we can tell the captain—”

“Wait—” Kelsang broke in. “We can tell the captain we’re going to the Fire Nation, but not the Central Air Temple. The airbenders there are already viewed with enough suspicion by the Four Nations. I don’t want him to think we’ve been harboring her.”

“But, you have?” Syntagma pointed out.

“And I suppose you want to tell him you’ve all had dealings with her too?” Kelsang retorted. “The secrets stay between us for now. We can tell him we’re going to—” He paused to look at the list of Juno sightings. “—North Chung-Ling in the Fire Nation, where someone reported seeing her a few weeks ago.”

“That’s fair,” Chai Li said. “And I agree on the secrets.” He’d been avoiding the thought, but it went without saying—“I’m assuming a huge risk by telling you all I’m a Dai Li agent. I’ll be in danger of discovery by both the League and Dai Li now.”

“Okay, but—” Syntagma protested. “I still want the money for finding her.”

“And my statue!” Flamer added.

There were a few groans from around the table.

“If Chai Li’s claims about Dai Li being alive are legitimate—” Klo mused. “—I’m sure Captain Lan Tai would be just as willing to reward you for his capture as Juno’s. More, even.”

The old earthbender considered this. 

“Fine, I’m in. How long does it take to get to the Central Air Temple on a bison, airbender?”

“Uh—” Kelsang faltered. “—I don’t have my bison with me.”

“Augghh!” Syntagma groaned, throwing his hands up. “So we have to rely on that loser Lan Tai for transportation too? Perfect.”

Although Kelsang didn’t answer, Chai Li felt a surprising amount of raw shame coming off the airbender, who had averted his eyes to busy himself with studying the map again. The emotion seemed…out of place, but Chai Li couldn’t even begin to place why.

“Don’t worry,” Flamer said suddenly. “I’m a master navigator. I can get us there by land, sea, or sky!”

“You got lost in the Spirit World!” Syntagma leered.

“That’s different!” Flamer brushed it off. “We’re going to the Fire Nation. A man is drawn to his homeland, you know.”

“Fine, you can plan the route,” Chai Li said. “Otherwise, if we’re in agreement on where to go, you all finish packing. I’ll go find Captain Lan Tai and tell him the plan so he can arrange transportation for us.”

From there, things moved rather quickly. Captain Lan Tai was satisfied with their plan, and, surprisingly, had not anticipated them traveling by bison anyway.

“Easier to find signs of Juno on the ground,” he explained. 

Instead, he set them up with two boats, each pulled by a pair of ottercats. Flamer’s planned route would take them across Full Moon Bay into the East Lake, through Serpent’s Pass, across the West Lake, and down the Great Divide to the Mo Ce Sea. Chai Li explained that if they found any signs of Juno along the way, they would divert to follow her trail, although he knew that if Kelsang’s suspicions were correct, that would most likely not be necessary.

By the afternoon, they had loaded everything into the boats and were pushing off from Full Moon Bay.

Chapter Text

Kelsang had little experience with ottercats—or boats, for that matter—but he had volunteered for the driver’s seat anyway. He doubted Syntagma or Flamer would be of any use—what with Syntagma giving off the air that he’d never done an ounce of physical work in his life, and Flamer having lost half his mind. Kelsang could pilot a ten ton mass of flying fur, so surely he could handle a couple of calf-sized aquatic mammals, right? It had been a while, but…

Klo sat in the bow of the opposite boat with Chai Li. The Water Tribes also made frequent use of animal mounts, so it made sense for her to volunteer to drive. She took to the creatures more quickly than Kelsang. The ottercats pulled the boats in pairs, each secured to the bow by their harnesses. Klo’s cats pulled her boat consistently forward. Although a pair of reigns allowed some measure of steering, Kelsang’s creatures seemed to prefer to go this way or that, irrespective of his direction.

“You have to give them a bit of freedom,” Klo commented when she noticed Kelsang’s boat beginning to fall behind. “They're curious. Their attention will wander, but you have to let them realize on their own that whatever they’ve spotted isn’t worth pursuing, or they’ll just keep going off track.”

“Do you have ottercats in the North?” Kelsang asked, easing off the reins on her recommendation. The more inquisitive of the two cats, who had a habit of diving beneath the waves instead of pulling forward, returned to its companion after a brief pursuit of some unseen object of interest.

“No, but they’re similar to snow leopard seals,” Klo said. “Hunters in the North sometimes tame them to assist them on hunts, but if you restrict them too much, they won’t listen. They want to hunt for themselves too.”

“Don’t snow leopard seals hunt otter…”

“Otterpenguins? Yes. Ottercats? No.” Klo said. “Their territories don’t overlap. Ottercats are freshwater animals, native to the Earth Kingdom. Otterpenguins are saltwater animals, native to the Water Tribes.”

“Got it,” Kelsang said, filing the information away in some mental archive. If he remembered correctly, ottercats and otterpenguins were about the same size, meaning the aforementioned snow leopard seals must be truly terrifying larger predators. At least flying bison, for all their bulk, were herbivores.

He allowed the two ottercats considerably more freedom than before, and they soon settled into a pattern of brief distractions and returns to course, their whiskered faces breaking the surface tension of the waves every now and then to observe their surroundings.

“What’s your tattoo mean?” Klo asked suddenly.

“Huh?”

She pointed. “Your tattoo? I thought you didn’t get them ‘til you mastered airbending.”

“Oh,” Kelsang breathed, catching on. She was referring to the hand-sized tattoo between his shoulder blades, visible between the sagging drapes of his robes. It was a circle surrounded by scripts written in eight radial spires, like the points on a compass. “It’s called Paed Tidt. We in the Order believe in aiding those in need anywhere in the world, so the tattoo provides protection from evil no matter which direction I travel. When I get my arrows, they’ll—”

“Ah, so it’s a cult tattoo,” Syntagma broke in.

Kelsang tore his gaze from the ottercats to stare bitterly at the earthbender behind him. “For the last time, it isn’t a cult!”

“You all get the same tattoo!” Syntagma insisted.

“Not exactly the same,” Kelsang protested. “It’s not a mark of membership. Just a ward against evil spirits, until we’ve attained the skills to protect ourselves. Then the arrow tattoos—”

“Uh huh, okay,” Syntagma scoffed. “And I’ve got a note from my mother that does the same thing.”

Kelsang’s jaw clenched, wishing he had now the witty comeback that would surely come to him hours later.

“Who needs tattoos?” Flamer broke in. “I’ll tell you how to beat a spirit!”

A collective groan echoed between the two boats as Flamer segued into yet another recount of his Spirit World exploits. Lion Turtles, dragons, and giant centipedes or whatever. Kelsang stopped listening. 

Morning gradually faded into afternoon, the open expanse of the Eastern Lake masking any progress they had made. They stopped once for lunch, lashing the boats together and allowing the ottercats to roam freely and hunt for an hour or so, before regrouping and continuing on, taking care to keep the great lake’s northern coast within sight.

Other than Flamer and his…”war stories”...no one else in the group seemed very talkative. Klo made a token effort to pry some background information out of the others as she’d done for Kelsang, but only Syntagma took the bait, taking the opportunity to brag about his extensive family and business successes—somehow, without saying exactly how he had become so successful.

“Kids these days just don’t know the meaning of hard work,” he insisted.

As the sun began to sink below the waves, the group finally pulled to shore for the night. After setting up the camp, they gathered around the campfire to eat and plan their route for tomorrow.

“Well, we should be able to make it to the Serpent’s Pass tomorrow,” Chai Li said as he examined the map that Captain Lan Tai had provided them. “We’re making good time.”

That time can’t pass fast enough, Kelsang thought. If I have to listen to another one of Flamer’s stories…

They shouldn’t even have to be out here! Why did it have to fall to them, a ragtag team united only by mutual misfortune, to chase down some vigilante and her supposedly evil father? If the League—the trained professionals— couldn’t handle this, what hope did they have? A problem this big should be left to world leaders or, you know, the Avatar .

Come to think of it…

“Klo,” Kelsang said, looking up from his rice and curried vegetables. “Did you ever meet the Avatar?”

The others looked up from their meals too.

Klo paused, and then shook her head.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Oh,” Kelsang sighed. “I just thought—since you were Chief—”

Klo frowned, stirring her meal with her chopsticks distractedly. 

“I don’t think anyone knows who the current Avatar is.”

“Not true!” Flamer declared, jumping up from his seat and spilling rice across the silty dirt of their campsite. “He’s a firebender!”

Kelsang narrowed his eyes. The last known Avatar was supposedly from the Fire Nation, yes, but he hadn’t been seen for decades.

“And…did you meet him?” Kelsang asked skeptically, bracing himself for another series of lies.

“Well…no,” Flamer admitted, surprisingly. “But of course I would know my own nation’s history! He’s definitely a firebender.”

“Flamer—” Chai Li said with a roll of his eyes. “— Every Avatar is a firebender.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Either way, I never met him,” Klo broke in, her eyes jumping from one member of the group to the next. “I don’t suppose…any of you have? Syntagma?”

The old earthbender inhaled deeply, searching his mind for some distant memory. “Eh…a long time ago. Avatar Kian was his name. Weird kid. Definitely didn’t have that Avatar ‘air.’ Kind of slimey—or maybe just unorthodox. Usually the Avatar is supposed to be noble and diplomatic and stuff but this guy didn’t even know how to write. And yet, he seemed to know exactly how to forge a deal that would satisfy everybody. And because he was the Avatar, everyone would honor it. At least until he disappeared.”

“How long ago did you meet him?” Chai Li asked.

“That had to have been some thirty or forty years ago,” Syntagma said with a shrug. “I was just an aide to the royal advisors back then.”

“So the Avatar would have to be an old man by now,” Kelsang said. “If he’s even still alive.”

“Wouldn’t the Air Temples have started looking for the next Avatar?” Klo asked.

“I’m sure they did,” Keslang began. “But as far as I know, they never found anyone. Or never announced it. Maybe the next Avatar died in infancy? We might be on water in the cycle now.”

“No, I think it would have to be Kian still, or an Air Nomad,” Syntagma said. “Maybe this will come as a surprise to some of you, because the Earth King tried to keep the whole incident under wraps, but—you  remember that whole mess in Ba Sing Se ten years ago? With the widespread bombings and destruction? Well, supposedly it was during that attack that the Avatar killed Dai Li. I guess maybe he’s not actually dead, but that’s besides the point. Dai Li had a whole complex underneath a lake in the agricultural district, and somehow, it sank during the attack. Expanded the whole lake, even. I know the King’s men didn’t do that, so everyone in the King’s circle thought it must have been the Avatar, but no one ever heard from Avatar Kian, so maybe he died that day too.”

“If he did die ten years ago, then the next Avatar would still be a child,” Klo said. “An Air Nomad, or a very young waterbender.”

Flamer let out a long, exaggerated sigh and leaned back against the rock he’d chosen as his seat. “Maybe the guy just wanted to retire after all that. These old bones can only handle so much action.”

“Avatars don’t retire,” Kelsang said pointedly. “He has a responsibility to the world! If he is out there then—normal people like us shouldn’t have to be picking up the slack. And anyway, wouldn’t Chai Li know if the Avatar had attacked Dai Li?”

All eyes turned to Chai Li now.

The Water Tribesman’s eyes flitted from one member of the group to the next, and then he shook his head helplessly. 

“I…would have been a child when that happened,” he said.

But that explanation didn’t quite sit right with Kelsang. “And Dai Li…just never spoke about such an important event?”

Chai Li continued to shake his head. “Not to me . I guess I wasn’t important enough to know the truth of what went down that day.”

 “And Dai Li has never been concerned about the Avatar?” Kelsang pressed.

Chai Li paused, but in the absence of an answer, Kelsang couldn’t tell whether it was because Chai Li was debating how to best hide the truth, or because he was questioning why he didn’t know it.

“I…no,” Chai Li said, sounding a little surprised. “If he is, it’s above my level. Otherwise, maybe he’s confident that there isn’t an Avatar around to stop him.”

Somehow, the idea that there was a madman completely unconcerned with the possibility of the world’s pseudo-deity coming after him was more unsettling to Kelsang than anything else they had discussed that night.

“ That’s encouraging,” Syntagma said, voicing what Kelsang was feeling. “There better be a damn good reward for this…”

The conversation fizzled out after that, and they soon settled down for bed.

By the next morning, a dense fog had settled over the Eastern Lake. The lake itself was like glass, the air still.

“This is going to make navigating difficult,” Klo breathed as they set out, the ottercats eagerly diving beneath the waves as they set off. “We’re going to have to stick close to the shoreline.”

“Can’t airbender boy here just blow it away?” Syntagma asked, gesturing vaguely to the fog around them.

Kelsang shrank down in the driver’s seat. “Not enough to make navigating easier.”

“Huh?” Syntagma said, arching an eyebrow. “What good are you then?”

Kelsang knew that arguing with Syntagma about how the saturation of the air was something beyond his bending control—about how this was really more Klo’s bending domain than his—would be pointless, but he threw it out there anyway. “It’s not air, Syntagma, it’s water. ”

“What are you talking about?” Syntagma argued. “Of course it’s air! Just get up and blow it away!”

Kelsang stubbornly clung to the reins and did not get up.

“Kids these days are so lazy,” the old man griped.

“I’m driving!” Kelsang protested , not about to have his work ethic questioned by someone whose success was thanks to nepotism. “You’re not doing anything!”

“Okay! Enough!” Klo said sharply. She took an audible breath, like a school teacher trying to keep her composure in front of difficult students. After a moment, she turned to Kelsang, her tone suddenly measured and sweet once more. “Could you at least give it a try, Kelsang? I don’t want to run aground or something.”

Kelsang considered the request for a moment before letting out a sigh. “Only because you asked so nicely.”

Maybe it was because he wanted to prove Syntagma wrong about his work ethic, or maybe it was because he really did want to see if he could do it—but he stood from his place at the reins. Air was air and water was water, but what could he do about the water in the air? He tried to reach out with his bending—to really feel the air—and he could, but there was something else distinctly clammy and cold and not air that hung among everything else like, well—a cloud. He had a vague thought back to some book he had read long ago about how weather worked, and how rising and falling pockets of air would saturate and desaturate based on changes in temperature and pressure, and how that made clouds and rain. But how was he supposed to do that with airbending?

Syntagma cleared his throat expectantly, and Kelsang realized everyone else was staring. Alright.

He reached out with both hands and pushed and pulled at the air in front of him with circular motions. It ebbed and flowed, circling and forming into streams with the motion of his hands, and he tried to imagine it expanding and contracting, heating and cooling, but that cloudy mess of “different” still hung in his element, no matter how he tugged at it.

“Just blow it away!” Syntagma insisted.

Kelsang grunted in frustration, and thrust outward with both arms. The air expanded out from him, the fog parting in their immediate vicinity for just a moment—but as soon as Kelsang let go, it rushed in to fill the gap once more.

He turned to Syntagma. “I told you, it’s water, not air. I can’t just blow it away over such a large area.”

“Hmph,” Syntagma huffed. “Maybe you’re just not a very good airbender.”

“Whatever.” Kelsang took up the reins and sat down, trying not to let the words bother him, or think about how far he was behind his peers when it came to the actual application of airbending. It had simply not been important or useful up until now.

“Thank you for trying.” Klo smiled encouragingly from the other boat, and Kelsang tried to smile back, but he’d never been a good liar.

They continued on for several hours, hugging the shoreline so they did not become lost in the mist. By the time they pulled ashore for lunch, the heat of the sun had burned away the top layer, and the fog drifted by in increasingly thin patches. When they cast off again, the fog had lifted, exposing clear skies.

In the distance, Kelsang could see more clouds on the horizon.

“Do you think we can beat that?” he asked Klo, pointing.

She raised her eyes to the horizon, where the winding crags of Serpent’s Pass were becoming shaded by the incoming clouds. She pursed her lips in thought, then answered, “It should be do-able.”

“What’s that?” Flamer asked suddenly, pointing a blocky finger towards a shape between their boats and the pass.

Chai Li raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun and squinted. “It looks like a boat? Maybe a fisherman or something.”

Indeed, as they approached, the shapeless mass began to look a lot more like a man in a small fishing boat.

Kelsang began directing his ottercats off to the side, intending to give the man a simple, friendly wave as they passed, and Klo followed his lead.

But the man in the small boat rowed it into position to intercept them.

“Maybe he’s sinking and needs help?” Chai Li suggested.

The boat did look awfully old, large patches of dark rot causing the boards it was constructed from to sag and warp. How he had managed to get this far out into the lake with it, Kelsang had no idea.

When they were within shouting distance, the man waved them down.

“Do you need help?” Klo asked.

“Help?” the man squawked, the word cutting the air like the shriek of a distressed bird. “Oh no, you’ll be the ones needing help!”

Kelsang raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Uh…why?” Syntagma asked.

“Because you’re getting raided!” the man declared, one eye threatening to pop out of its socket. He reached to his side and whipped out a rusty, crooked sword with a fast, but stuttering motion. “I’m Captain Pigeon, the fiercest pirate on the Eastern Lake!”

There was silence, and then—stifled laughter from around the group. 

“You? A pirate?” Flamer asked, standing from his place behind Klo and causing the boat to rock slightly. “You’ve got to be the worst pirate I’ve ever seen! You’re sailing a piece of driftwood!”

“Never insult a man’s ship!” Pigeon screeched, swinging towards Flamer with his rusty sword, but the distance between the boats assured the blade only hit open air.

“Whatever, we can’t waste our time on this guy,” Flamer said. 

Kelsang and Klo, nodding in agreement, directed their ottercats to swim away from the clearly crazy man and his sinking boat.

“No!” Pigeon called after them. “No one may pass without paying tribute! I know you’ve got money!” He pointed his sword at Syntagma, then let it clatter to his boat's floor as he took up an oar and began paddling after the rapidly departing boats.

In his distraction, Kelsang did not notice the second boat approaching from behind until it was too late. The ottercats suddenly leapt from the water into his boat, a chaotic mess of flying water and slick fur as they sought shelter from some unseen threat, clambering over Kelsang and Syntagma to hide under the seats.

“Ahoy!” called a confident, but somehow not very friendly, voice.

Behind them, a small skipper pulled by two eeligators waited. The creatures’ reptilian heads broke the surface of the water, their yellow eyes blinking sideways at the three haphazardly arranged boats. The boat’s “captain,” if he could be called that, stood with one foot on the bow. His hair and beard grew wild and long, and a menagerie of mismatched trinkets and jewelry dangled off his coat. Two shoddily dressed henchmen hovered behind him.

“Now that’s a pirate!” Flamer said delightedly, seeming to miss what exactly that meant for them.

The “pirate” gazed down at them gleefully. “I see you’ve met my friend Pigeon!”

“Buzz off, Falcon!” Pigeon snapped, standing again so that he could be closer to Falcon’s height. His boat rocked recklessly with the motion. “I was here first!”

“Oh, tsk, tsk,” Falcon said, shaking his head and forming his lips into a sarcastic frown. He turned back to the two boats, grinning. “Sorry about him. He’s not quite right, you see!”

“We can see that,” Syntagma grumbled, scowling as he rearranged his wet robes.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Klo started.

“Oh, young miss, I’m not here for trouble,” Falcon said with a grin. “Just whatever valuables you have on board.” His hand rested on the hilt of a sword, a silent threat. “You can give it here, or I can come get it from you.”

“I said buzz off!” Pigeon screeched again, now armed with his sword in one hand and an oar in the other. He began flailing his way towards Falcon’s boat, his own lurching and rocking jerkily with his one-handed row. Falcon laughed raucously, then turned back to the two boats before him.

“So what’ll it be?” He pointed to Syntagma. “You look like a rich man! I expect something good!”

Klo, Chai Li, and Flamer looked on tensely from the other boat.

“What? I ain’t giving him nothin’!” Syntagma declared, clutching what Kelsang could only assume was a money pouch to his chest.

This did not go unnoticed by Falcon, who appeared to have delegated the task of keeping Pigeon at bay to one of his henchmen. “Give it here, old man!”

“No! Keep your slimy hands away and get a real job, you lowlife urchin!” Syntagma said, jabbing a finger at him.

“I see,” Falcon said, his smile fading as he turned to the other henchman. “Board them.”

The second henchman, a short, wiry man, launched himself across the distance between the boats, landing on all fours right between Kelsang and Syntagma. Both of them reeled back, Syntagma holding the money pouch as far away as he could, and Kelsang simply trying to avoid the action as the boat wobbled and swayed.

A jet of water suddenly blasted the man over the edge with a splash, and Kelsang looked over to see Klo with her arms raised.

Falcon cursed. “Waterbender!” And he crouched, as if to leap into Klo’s boat, which surely couldn’t hold another person.

Before he could, Flamer rose and struck out with a crescent of flame, forcing him back. On the far side of Falcon’s skipper, Pigeon got a sneaky strike on Falcon’s second distracted henchman, who cried out as Pigeon’s rusty sword bit into the meat of his thigh. The noise drew Falcon’s attention, and while his head was turned, Kelsang, spotting an opportunity on three perfectly aligned targets, spun up a sphere of air and hurled it towards them over Syntagma’s head. It broadsided Falcon, sending him stumbling into his henchman, bowling them over and into Pigeon’s boat. There was a loud crack as whatever structural integrity the boat had left gave way under the weight of the three seafarers, followed by frantic splashing and curses as they tried to untangle themselves. The eeligators’ heads spun around, drawn to the frantic splashing just out of their sight.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Syntagma cried, fists raised, and for a moment Kelsang thought this might actually be rare praise from the cranky old man.

That hope was soon dashed, however, as Syntagma rose, arms outstretched to steady himself, and he walked to the back of the boat. He placed a foot on the edge, judging the distance.

“What are you doing?” Kelsang hissed.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Syntagma shot back, which didn’t answer the question. And then he answered it anyway by launching himself gracelessly across the water, his front half managing to clear the bow of Falcon’s boat while his legs kicked uselessly in the air for a moment before he managed to roll himself in.

Kelsang didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t this…

“Syntagma!” Klo cried out in disbelief.

“What is he doing?” Chai Li asked, directing the question at Kelsang, like he was supposed to know.

Then, a hand burst from the water and grasped the edge of Kelsang’s boat, drawing a yelp of surprise from his throat. The pirate’s head broke the water’s surface, and he gave Kelsang a devilish, crooked-toothed grin.

“No!” Kelsang said, lashing out with a blast of air, which did little more than flap the man’s cheeks. “No thank you! Get off please!”

He lashed out with his foot next—half-heartedly, because he simply couldn’t bring himself to kick hard enough to crack the man’s nose. The pirate took advantage of his mercy and grabbed him by the ankle, and Kelsang kicked out a little harder with his other foot, catching him on the edge of his eye socket, to no avail. He was vaguely aware of Klo continuing to yell at Syntagma in the background, but was too distracted by his own problem to see how that was going.

Then the boat jolted, and another body stumbled into the boat. Flamer righted himself, and promptly punched the man in the face with a flame-enveloped fist, causing him to release Kelsang and splash backwards.

“You gotta put some ‘oomph’ in it!” Flamer said less-than-helpfully.

Before Kelsang could respond, the boat lurched again, and there was Syntagma, cradling a wooden box and some stacks of papers.

“Go! Go go go!” he said.

Kelsang was frozen, his mind still trying to catch up. Klo and Chai Li were still in their boat. Falcon, Pigeon, and one of the other pirates were thrashing in the remains of Pigeon’s boat. The last pirate was still trying to flail his way back to Kelsang’s boat.

“Drive, kid, drive!” Flamer said, shoving him towards the front of the boat. Klo was summoning a swell to push her and Chai Li away from the pirates, and with no time to think, Kelsang pushed out blindly with a gust of wind, but with no sail, it caught nothing except more air.

“No, with the reins!” Flamer clarified, shoving them into Kelsang’s hands, possibly without realizing the ottercats were still cowering under the seats.

“Get the other!” Kelsang said, reaching under his seat to haul out one of the creatures and hurl it back into the water. Flamer got the other, and as soon as both ottercats hit the water, they darted frantically in different directions, and it was all Kelsang could do to keep his grip on the reins, fearing the frightened animals would tear themselves free.

But eventually they righted themselves, and they were on their way, racing out towards open water.

Once they had put some distance between themselves and the…”pirates”...Kelsang rounded on Syntagma.

“What exactly did you risk our lives for just now?” he spat venomously, gesturing towards the spoils in Syntagma’s hands.

Syntagma grinned.

“There’s a lot of good stuff here,” he said. He shuffled through the papers. But as he continued, his face fell. Most of the papers were wet and stuck together, and disintegrated at the slightest touch. “Bah, well…how about this one?” He held up the only paper he’d been able to separate without it falling apart.

Waterlogged, it was hardly readable, but it was clearly a wanted poster. All that was visible of the perpetrator’s likeness was an eye and part of a temple, which bore a distinctive scar. The rest had been washed away by the elements, scarcely more than a few radicals visible of what was once a description of this person. But the reward amount was still there.

One hundred thousand gold pieces. A steep price, considering most criminals only fetched somewhere around a thousand.

“Oh ho ho,” Flamer chuckled, taking the poster for a closer look. “I wonder what this person did to get in so much trouble with the Earth Kingdom?”

“Are you insane?” Kelsang asked, snatching the paper. Assuming the artist had managed to capture this person’s image exactly , it was still hardly worth the risk of sinking halfway across the Eastern Lake, considering all they had to go on was an eye. They would never find this person. “This is what you jumped over there for?”

“What?” Syntagma said with a shrug. “I mean, I didn’t know exactly what I’d find. But you know, a guy like him with all that jewelry hanging off of him—he’s finding some lucrative business out here.”

“You’re already rich!” Kelsang said, feeling his temper flare like a wildfire. He and every other Air Nomad had managed for centuries on their own subsistence farming and the generosity of others. Few Air Nomads carried money. Some even considered it a sin to do so! Was it necessary in the rest of the world? Yes. But to the extent that one must hoard millions to billions of gold pieces? He swatted the paper with its hundred-thousand gold piece reward. “This is a drop in the bucket for you, right? What difference does it make for you?”

“It makes me richer.”

Kelsang stared, simply unable to conceive the notion of greed and the allure of money on the same level as Syntagma.

“Stop fighting!” Klo snapped from across the water. “What’s done is done.”

“This can’t happen again going forward,” Kelsang insisted, glaring at Syntagma. “We’re already getting paid or whatever to capture Juno. We can’t be risking it for crap like this.”

“We’re still doing that?” Chai Li piped in, at definitely the wrong time. The rest of the group stared at him now, and he recoiled. “Sorry, I just thought—I thought we were seeking her out to figure out this Dai Li thing?”

“It’s for the money, stupid,” Syntagma insisted.

“No it isn’t ,” Kelsang contended.

“Hey!” Klo called. “Can you stop? We need to figure out where we are!”

“I’m this close to kicking Syntagma off the boat,” Kelsang said.

“You couldn’t even kick the pirate off of you!” Flamer laughed, drawing a sharp look from the airbender.

“Stop!” Klo said, louder this time. She stood up from her place in the other boat, the small vessel lurching in the waves with the movement. “Look at me!” she said sternly, and she waited until the other four had stopped glaring at each other long enough to look at her. “Lay off the money argument for now. We’re falling behind. If this keeps up, we’ll lose Juno’s trail, assuming there even is one.”

“Yeah, and then we lose the reward,” Syntagma said, shrugging as if he’d been in the right the whole time. “So shut up, airbender.”

Kelsang struggled to keep the bubbling pot that was his anger from boiling over, but he managed to tear his eyes away from Syntagma and stare out at the vast expanse that was the Eastern Lake. Klo may not have been invested in the philosophical argument like he was, but she was still right about their squabbling impeding the actual mission.

“Hmph, that’s what I thought,” Syntagma grumbled, and Kelsang had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything.

—

The clouds continued to roll in. Something imperceptible changed in the air. Kelsang didn’t know how to explain it. Something only an airbender could feel, maybe. A minute change in the wind? A drop in temperature or pressure, perhaps? Something about the uneasy silence, the lack of bird song, and calmness of the water’s surface. Though his temper had cooled, he couldn’t help but find himself on edge. 

Chai Li was in the other boat, studying the map. 

“We’re not far from the Serpent’s Pass now,” he said. 

Indeed, the jagged edges of the land bridge were visible in the distance, though its serpentine shape looked more like a rigid wall from this angle, stretching clear across the horizon.

“Can we make it before nightfall?” Klo asked.

“I think so,” Chai Li said. He pointed toward a spot in the middle, where the jagged spires seemed to disappear beneath the waves. “I think we can make it through there, and then maybe camp on the shore on the other side.”

Kelsang cast a wary glance to the darkening clouds above.

“Ohhhhh boy,” Flamer said in an exasperated tone, and at first Kelsang thought he was merely annoyed at the longness of the day. But then he pointed to a speck on the horizon, bobbing on the water’s surface. “We’ve got another visitor.”

The rest of them squinted. Indeed, something shaped like a small fishing boat was bobbing towards them.

Kelsang’s fingers tightened around the reins, and he pre-emptively directed the ottercats to swing outwards, orienting them so that they’d be shielded from the other boat’s approach. He didn’t want another situation like the eeligators, that was for sure.

A few minutes later, they were being waved down by another middle aged man, not so much unlike Pigeon.

“Stop!” he cried, his voice cracking. His hair was a matted mess of grime and dirt, but at least the man had had the sense to pull it back out of his face, unlike Pigeon. “You can’t come through here!”

“Why not?” Klo demanded.

“It’s not safe,” the man said, glancing around him, as if some unseen danger would pluck him from his boat at any moment. “The pass—it ain’t called the Serpent’s Pass for nothing.”

Chai Li was looking at him skeptically, Kelsang noted, but the Water Tribesman said nothing.

Klo pursed her lips. “We’ve heard of the serpents,” Klo assured him. “And we haven’t seen any sign of them today—”

“Today!” the man said suddenly. “Consider yourselves lucky, then. It’s their matin’ season, you see. They’re territorial. Fightin’ amongst themselves. All the best nestin’ sites lie in the sea caves below the cliffs of the pass. They’ll be on ya in a heartbeat if they catch ya comin’ near.”

Klo exchanged a glance with Chai Li, who had the map out, trying to work out how much time they would lose if they went the long way around. “We’re…kind of in a hurry,” she said.

“Well, get bein’ in a hurry out of your heads,” the man said sternly. “I’m tellin’ ya—don’t count on goin’ through the pass.”

“We’re following a girl,” Chai Li said suddenly, leaning forward. “It’s important that we find her quickly. Did a girl come through here recently? Tan skin? Long braided hair? Dressed in gray?”

The man paused.

“Hmm,” he hummed. “Not quite matching that description, but there was a girl. Alone. Wouldn’t tell me where she was headed.”

“Which way did she go?” Chai Li pressed.

The man pointed south, towards the opposite shore. “The long way.”

Kelsang could see Chai Li’s mannerisms shift towards skepticism. He couldn’t help but agree. After all, they’d already encountered pirates today. Who was to say this man wasn’t just another crewman trying to drive them towards a waiting pirate ambush with a plausible tale of nature’s fury? He had the same twitchiness, the same furtive glance and desperation as Pigeon.

Chai Li turned to the rest of them. “What do you guys think?”

“How are we supposed to know this ‘girl’ is Juno?” Syntagma said. “I bet he’d say anything to get us to do what he wanted.”

“But what if it is Juno?” Flamer pointed out. “We might be going entirely the wrong way.”

“And what if she’s faking us out?” Chai Li suggested. “Throwing us off her trail on purpose?”

“We already think she’s heading to the Central Air Temple,” Klo said, leaning back to look at Chai Li’s map. “What if this is a ruse to throw us off track?”

“We should keep going straight,” Kelsang agreed, eying the man, who was shaking his head now in disappointment, warily.

“I’m tellin’ ya…” he started.

“Thanks…” Klo tried awkwardly. “We’ll, uh…keep your advice in mind.” She smiled stiffly in that diplomatic way of hers, and then flicked the reins, driving the ottercats forward.

They left the old man in their wake, looking back every now and then to ensure he did not follow.

He didn’t.

Kelsang stared out over the open water. The feeling of unease wouldn’t leave him. Considering all that had happened today, he was well within his right to feel wary, but the logical part of him worried it was starting to edge into paranoia.

What if pirates waited for them at the pass too?

Ahead of them, the two ends of the serpentine land bridge dove together beneath the waves, leaving a small, shallow waterway passable by small boats. A bottleneck, perfect for setting up an ambush.

“Relaaaaax, kid,” Flamer said, laying a heavy hand on the airbender’s shoulder. Kelsang flinched at the weight. “You know how much time I’ve spent on boats?”

“None?” Kelsang guessed.

“Wha—no!” Flamer said, aghast. “I’m an honorary member of the Fire Nation Coast Guard, you know!”

“ Honorary?” Kelsang echoed, unsure where to even begin about that lack of credentials.

“---Anyway,” Flamer said with a wave of his hand. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. We’ll slip through the pass and be out the other side before you know it. Then it’s smooth sailing from there.”

“Right,” Kelsang said, his shoulders hunching. 

The wind began to tickle at his ears, just the slightest caress at first, so that he hardly noticed it. And then, over the course of a short minute or two, it picked up considerably, causing his robes to billow and bluster, so that Flamer behind him was swatting them down to keep them from battering his face.

The feeling of dread in his gut was growing.

“Guys…” he said slowly, glancing warily at the low, churning clouds above. “Maybe we should find somewhere to wait this out.”

Now, Kelsang wasn’t the most experienced airbender, and certainly not a diviner of weather…but the feeling of atmospheric disquiet simply could not be ignored. At this point, the whistling wind and towering waves should have been enough to dissuade any traveler from proceeding further. But it went further than that, even. He couldn’t explain it, but it was like his very element was warning him not to test it.

“Ugggh,” Syntagma groaned. “You really believe that guy?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with him,” Kelsang said, gesturing to the broiling clouds above them. “Do you need someone to tell you that that looks bad?”

“Looks fine to me,” the old man sniffed.

And as if on Syntagma’s command, suddenly, as quickly as the whipping wind and roiling waves had begun…all was quiet. The bobbing boats came to rest, gently rocking only with the movement of their occupants. The ottercats’ heads broke the water’s surface, their big eyes scanning the horizon furtively. The air and water were still. The lake could have been the same glass surface they set out on this morning. The literal calm before the storm.

“Huh, well, will you look at that?” Syntagma said, waving his hands at the eerie calm that enveloped them. “Nothing to worry about.”

Kelsang didn’t have any words or logic to describe the creeping terror that was slowly building within him. How was he supposed to describe the completely illogical animal inside of him, reacting on fear and instinct? Right now, that animal inside Kelsang was hissing and bristled, anticipating an attack, but having lost sight of the attacker.

Flamer found it first.

“Uhhh,” he said dumbly, whatever animal that existed within his brain also lacking the words to describe what it was seeing. He pointed back in the direction they’d come.

Some fraction of a mile behind them, the sky had descended , the low cloud deck joining the water’s surface in a thin, funneled wisp. As they watched, it grew, fattening into a stovepipe that lashed and churned the water below violently.

The wind whistled once more.

“Go!” Kelsang yelled above the wind, flicking the reins, and the ottercats shot ahead so quickly he feared they might tear themselves free of their harnesses. “Go!”

The lake fought them at every step. The waves rose, battered into a blinding spray by the relentless wind. The current drew them towards the funnel, and Kelsang considered cutting the ottercats free, but it would doom the rest of them. As if the spray wasn’t bad enough on its own, then the rain started, coming down in thick, sideways sheets, completely masking the waterspout as it bore down on them.

“Airbender, waterbender, do something!” Syntagma yelled above the din.

Kelsang couldn’t even see the other boat now, and Syntagma was crazy if he thought Kelsang— some nerdy, weak, spindly kid from the Southern Air Temple—had it in him to fight a tornado of all things. Airbenders weren’t even supposed to fight. They were supposed to find peaceful solutions, clever tricks to keep themselves out of trouble.

What clever trick was there to save him from nature’s fury? If the spirits wanted you dead, they’d have you dead.

“Get under the seats!” he managed to say, audible only thanks to that extra airbender lung capacity. Syntagma started to say something, but Kelsang couldn’t even hear him. “Get under—the seat—Syntagma!”

He never saw if the old earthbender did or not. The next thing he was aware of was the ottercats’ reins cinching so tightly around his hands he thought they might actually cut down to the bone—then they went slack. Then, Flamer was clinging to him, and he thought he heard him say something about trying to hold him down, but he’d never be sure. Before he could duck down himself, he lost any sense of the boat entirely. Flamer was there, and then he wasn’t. Then up was down, left was right, direction was meaningless and inverted and curved and bubbling and confusing, rain lashed, wind howled—and then it was nothing.

Chapter Text

Kelsang felt the bloom of concussive pain across the back of his head---and then his nose cracked against the desk in front of him. A book clattered to the stone floor. The students behind him stifled laughter. The nun at the front of the room didn’t notice. 

Kelsang clenched his jaw, and also pretended---impossibly---not to notice. He resisted the urge to wipe his nose to check for blood. That would only give them the satisfaction of a reaction. 

He was in one of the instruction halls in the Southern Air Temple. The high arching ceiling was tiled with images of drifting clouds and herds of bison. A peaceful scene, no doubt meant as a metaphor from the architect about striving for new heights, for enlightenment through knowledge. 

A piece of crumpled up parchment sailed past his ear. Despite the miss, the laughter continued. If only the impartation of knowledge could bring enlightenment to the miscreants behind him. If not that, then maybe some good old-fashioned karma? 

Please? He asked tiredly to any wayward spirit who might be listening.  

He eyed the nun at the front of the room, hoping she might glance up from her shuffling of papers and take enough pity on him to at least tell them to stop, but of course she didn’t. 

How was it that his bullies never got what was coming to them? 

Finally, the nun cleared her throat, the papers now stacked neatly in her hands. 

“This will be your final exam,” she said, eyes scanning the room. “You may not leave until you’ve answered every question. Please clear your desks except for your writing utensils.” 

There was a sound of shuffling papers as the students behind him put away their notes (assuming they had even bothered to take them). 

At least Kelsang had the satisfaction of knowing he was the smartest person in the room. Mathematics, science, philosophy---they all came easy to him. Perhaps he should take a bit of pity on the poor fools behind him, who if not for popularity, would never amount to anything. 

The nun placed a stack of papers on his desk. 

“You may begin.” 

He looked down at the first question. 

What?  

The question didn’t make any sense.  

1. As the inconceivable in the have levery perstance of that comer satisfactive leve leaders a work engagerson in they element becompany's management. A won't becompany. Humance systems able in the involvement be practices has a won't based the cost effectices. The desting. What is the result?

Kelsang cast a hesitant glance around the room, thinking surely he wasn’t the only one struggling to make sense of this gibberish--- 

---But everyone else seemed to be making quick work of it, scribbling down answers and flipping to the next page. 

Okay, maybe he would just come back to that one… 

The next question was hardly better. 

2. Coriolis effection objection with the Coriolis force the Coriolis force be used the Coriolis, theorology. In of recognized the maticlockwise rotates with centist called previous force began of reference force acts in a reference be used previous force is for the Coriolis force acts to thers appeared inertial frame. The Coriolis for each as long ovement of objectoriolis always the Eartilleryday/nigh precisions of objectly for motions only for movement for motions of observer in the Cories. Where is the observer?

In this question, at least, he thought he understood what concept was being asked about. And yet, it should be a math question, and there were no numbers. How was he supposed to calculate a position with no numbers? 

He flipped to the next page and scanned through the questions, hoping to find something that wasn’t totally incomprehensible. 

3. The basic capacity to improve empathy. Since emotions involves will belings, ther hand desires from the empathy. What should be done?
4. Insects animals, use hemolymph is not contained hemocyanimalled hemollusks use and molymph in a fluid called circulatory oxygen. Some a fluid called call enough for their bodies are smals, their bodies are smals, suffice being oxygen. Which element is dominant?
5. For develop dise tissue dised and that are cow disease infected and, some immune mechanimals individuals are hosts. For example tissue damagent. Microorganisms ani release and, some infective infectious are in that paralyzes than 5% of that all infected and, some inflicts damagent. Microorganism in that are infected and that promisease tissue dise that ariably virulent. What is the infection?

The students around him were flying through the test, as if they had been given something totally different.  

Kelsang had never cheated on a test in his life, but the temptation to glance at his neighbor’s exam was strong, just to see if their questions were the same gibberish or if he’d been given something different by mistake. His eyes drifted--- 

And he was quickly reprimanded with the sharp slap of the teacher’s pointer against his knuckles. 

“Eyes on your own paper!” she hissed. 

A few giggles from behind him. 

“S-sorry,” he muttered, looking back down at his test hopelessly. This had to be a joke right? Had those pests behind him somehow managed to get the teacher in on one of their pranks? “It’s just…I think there’s something wrong with my test.” 

The old nun craned her head to look. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“I can’t---I can’t read any of this.” 

The nun let out an indignant snort.  

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you with that,” she said simply. “It’s not my fault you didn’t study…or learn to read.” 

And she was gone, her shoes clicking gently on the tiles. 

He had to be going crazy. There was simply no other explanation. 

Then, a small piece of paper, folded into the shape of a glider, drifted gently onto his desk. 

At first, Kelsang ignored it, sure it was some taunting message from one of his peers. Then, after deciding he wouldn’t be able to focus with the unread message begging his attention, he reluctantly unfolded it. 

Need help? It read. 

He looked around, expecting to be greeted by the derisive smile of one of the class bullies, but they were all focused on their tests. Instead, looking at him expectantly, was Heng. Heng was a short boy with a lumpy head and a kind face to whom Kelsang had simply never paid much notice. He wasn’t a bully, but Kelsang would not consider him a friend by any means either. He re-read the note, wondering if he was missing something, and then quickly looked back at Heng and shook his head. He had never cheated before and didn’t intend to start. Tests were certainly not something he needed help with. 

He flipped back to the first page and started scratching out an answer. He had only just begun when something new stole his attention---a wetness seeping through his shoes. 

Making a face of disgust, he kicked against it, thinking it was some new means of gross prank from his peers---maybe a smuggled-in slug or the mother of all spitballs. 

But the kick resulted in a splash. He looked down. 

The entire floor was now submerged in half an inch of water, trickling in slowly---impossibly---from the windows, despite the clear skies and the classroom’s high elevation among the mountain peaks.  

He didn’t have time to focus on it, but before he could get back to the question at hand, another note landed on his desk. 

Really, I can help.  

Heng was looking at him hopefully, but Kelsang simply crumpled up the paper and dropped it to a soggy doom in the steadily rising water. His ankles were wet. 

The questions didn’t get any easier, or more legible, as he struggled to decipher and answer each of them. His classmates began to finish, rising from their seats and taking their completed exams to the old nun one by one. Each time someone else finished, another bit of his confidence eroded away. He was less than halfway done, and despite the nun never specifying a time limit, there clearly was one. 

The water had risen to his waist. 

He kept going, trying to ignore the cold bite of the water as it crept up his torso. It began to spill over the edges of the desk, and he wrote faster, fearing it would wash away what little he had been able to accomplish---but as it lapped at the edges of the paper, by some miracle, it did not dissolve. 

More students finished, and as the water rose above Kelsang’s wrists and forearms, he continued to frantically write something---anything---for each question. 

Finally, only he and Heng remained. The other boy caught his eye and stared, pointed to his test, then to himself, and then to Kelsang. 

Kelsang tore his eyes away without attempting to communicate an answer. He didn’t have time to waste. He could barely see the paper below the rising water, its surface fracturing the light and casting it about like broken glass. He tried to read the next question, and then Heng was at his shoulder, clutching his dry, completed test. 

“Let me help you.” 

Kelsang looked between the boy and the test in his hands, and then turned back to his own. 

“I don’t need your help.” 

Heng lingered for a moment, looking on sadly, but when Kelsang paid him no further mind, he finally left. 

Only Kelsang remained. Water lapped at his collarbone, and then his chin. It was all he could do to keep his head above water, let alone focus on this demon of a test he’d been given. He tried to imagine a string attached to the top of his head, pulling him higher and higher, and when the water began to tickle his nose, he finally moved to stand on his desk---only to find that his ankles had been inexplicably shackled to the floor. 

I may not leave until I’ve answered every question, he remembered, thinking this must surely be the answer to the grand overarching problem. 

He sucked in a breath, hoping, praying that those deep breathing exercises in his airbending lessons had been enough, and ducked below the waves. He could barely see the paper through the blur of the water in his eyes, certainly not enough to answer the remaining questions in earnest, and so he blindly scribbled answers---any answer---hoping that it would somehow free him from this nightmare. His lungs burned, clenching and heaving involuntarily, fighting his throat and jaw that wouldn’t open to let in the air that wasn’t there---and then he couldn’t hold it anymore. 

He didn’t remember blacking out, or waking up, for that matter. 

It was dark---and then it wasn’t. Light emanated from somewhere, and nowhere, and all around him was blackness---but somehow, he could see. 

There was a bookcase… 

By the time he’d left, Kelsang had read very nearly every book in the Southern Air Temple’s vast collection (if he hadn’t, perhaps he’d have spent more time thinking about his decision to leave), and he didn’t remember seeing this particular bookcase. Each of its shelves was filled with books that had accumulated a healthy coating of dust. Some of the covers were blistered and cracked with age. Some, moth-eaten. None of the titles he recognized, and some were illegible, or missing entirely. 

One book sat lonely on the right half of a shelf just above eye level, as if its neighbors had scooted away in order to maintain some healthy distance, or it had been placed there specifically in hopes that it would be forgotten and lost to time. And time was clearly doing its work. The tome was bound in the skin of some long-unrecognizable animal (animal, he hoped), the cover and spine brown with spots of black rot. There was no title, and no sign that there ever had been. 

Everything about it screamed “forbidden,” and that thought only intrigued Kelsang even more. What could possibly be contained within its pages that someone had wished to hide? Why had they wished to hide it? Why here? And what a fool they had been to think that he wouldn’t sniff it out eventually! In Kelsang's quest for knowledge and enlightenment, no page would go unturned. 

He reached for it---and something light and hairy skittered across the back of his hand. 

Every hair bristled on the back of his neck, and he flung the book away from him with an undignified yelp. It clattered to the floor open and face-up. Kelsang regained his composure and leaned in for a closer look, and the culprit revealed itself. A tiny spider-bat, no bigger than his thumbnail, scuttled across the page, its dark form stark against the faded pages. 

“I’m sorry, little guy!” he said, feeling a pang of guilt for practically throwing the tiny creature and its home across the room. “I didn’t mean to---" 

The creature looked up, six beady, red eyes meeting Kelsang’s, and the room seemed to sway. He thought he must have fallen over, as he was suddenly eye-to-eyes with the thing, every detail in its wrinkled, hairy face magnifying as if beneath a lens. But then, Kelsang was looking up at it, and then he was standing beneath its shadow (except that there was no light to cast a shadow), and he realized the tiny creature was now towering over him. 

“--- startle you.” 

He had no way of knowing if the creature’s growth spurt had altered its features, or if all spider-bats looked so terrifying up close. There were the six glowing red eyes, no visible pupil or anything else to give any indication what direction it was looking (though Kelsang suspected that with six eyes, all directions were probably correct). The flared nose and ears. Six-inch fangs contained in a mouth that seemed fixed in a permanent grin. Worst of all was that even through all the spider-bat features, there was still something unsettlingly human about it.

The creature leaned in, some of its jointed legs creaking. Kelsang stood frozen, pinned by its gaze. 

“Ohhh,” the creature purred (from its mouth, Kelsang thought, but the mouth hadn’t moved, so the sound could have vibrated from anywhere). “That doesn’t look good.” 

Kelsang blinked. “I’m---I’m sorry?”

“This,” the creature said, and it raised a strangely human, clawed hand. A leathery wing brushed against his shoulder as the creature reached around to touch part of his scalp. When it pulled back, the clawed digit was streaked with blood. “You got hurt pretty bad, didn’t you?” 

Kelsang’s eyes widened. “What?” 

He tried to remember exactly how he had gotten here. He thought he remembered a classroom and a test, but it seemed like ages ago, although somehow he knew no time had passed at all. He remembered the unreadable text, the rising water, the invincible paper… How silly it seemed, looking back on it. Like wax to a flame, the whimsy and dream logic of all this began to melt away. He was awake---but he wasn’t. What had happened before all this? 

“Where are we?” 

“A space between,” the creature answered. 

Before Kelsang could begin to process exactly what that meant, a loud pop rang out in the space between. In the dim not-light, Kelsang could see a crack, as if in glass, had appeared beneath the dropped book. 

“Not much time now,” the creature said, taking the book gently between two of its claws, and as if on cue, another pop sounded, and a new crack branched off from the original. 

No, Kelsang thought, trying to think about things logically. This has to be some kind of lucid nightmare. And he tried every trick he could think of to wake up---imagined himself pinching himself, holding his breath, opening his eyes---and yet he could feel that there was no connection to his real body. If he had had a heart to beat in this place, it would have been racing as the cold clarity of mortality dawned on him. 

While Kelsang tried to reason this all out, the creature had flipped to a page in the book and was looking at it with all the thoughtfulness of a scholar. “You’ll die if you do nothing.” 

Another crack appeared. 

Kelsang’s eyes flitted about, trying to find something he could use---some clever solution. He stared into the void, but beyond the bookcase and the spider-bat and the splintering floor, there was nothing. Nothing. 

“What can I do?” 

Now, the creature’s head inclined up to look at him. “I can help you.” 

It should have set the alarm bells ringing in Kelsang’s head. There was no shortage of stories of spirits deceiving lost travelers in the woods, promising them help in exchange for something seemingly small. But it was never small. And it never ended well for the traveler. 

But what choice did he have? There were still things he wanted to learn, things he wanted to do! He hadn’t yet made his mark on the world in the way he wanted, he hadn’t changed anything! He hadn’t proven to all the people who told him he was worth nothing that he was worth something! The world was the same horrid place as when he was born into it, and it would be a life wasted to lie down and die without doing what he could to change it. 

What about Lao, the only person who had ever really believed in him? Kelsang tried not to imagine him getting the news that Kelsang had died on his first real nomadic journey. A journey ended before it had even begun. Somehow, the thought of disappointing Lao scared him the most.

And wasn’t it normal to be afraid to die? 

He clenched his jaw and tried to steady the quaver in his voice as he looked the spirit in the eyes. “What are you?” 

“I am called Panggu,” it said, and Kelsang winced, remembering some old adage about naming something giving it power. “A blood spirit.”

“How can you help me?”

Though the spirit’s expression remained that permanent grin, Kelsang felt it would have grinned wider, if it could. 

“I offer you life,” it said simply. “In exchange for your time.”

“My time?”

“One percent,” it said, “Of your remaining time in this life. If I use it every day, and you live a full life, that’s less than six months.”

It read just like one of the monks’ old tales. An evil spirit, feigning benevolence, helping an otherwise hopeless traveler. Promising powers untold. New beginnings. At a price.

He’d be a fool to take it.

…He’d be a fool not to take it.

It was an obvious ploy with an obvious catch, but he was quickly running out of time. The floor splintered, cracks branching out from the place where the book had fallen like strands of a spider’s web. And now the…walls?...were beginning to fracture too.

It was predatory, he knew. Any deal would be lopsided in the spirit’s favor.

But even for a lopsided contract, he needed to do his best to understand all the terms.

“One percent?” Kelsang echoed, feeling another jolt as a large crack opened somewhere behind him. “You said every day. Are you limited to one percent of every day?”

“Every day,” the spirit confirmed.

Kelsang did the mental math. That should work out to about fourteen minutes per day.

“What are you using my time for?”

The spirit considered this.

“I have…unfinished business…in your world,” Panggu said.

“What kind of business?” Kelsang pressed.

From somewhere above him, another piece of the “space between” broke free and came crashing down on him in a rain of glass-like fragments. One piece found the back of his skull, and though he surely shouldn’t have been able to feel anything, he felt the sharp fire of the fresh wound just as clearly as he would have in the mortal plane. The warm rush of blood. He raised his arms to try and shield his not-body from the rest as the sharp edges tore at him. When he pulled back the hand that had covered the back of his head, it was bloody.

“You are wasting your own time,” the spirit said flatly, and it held out the open book to him. “Do you accept?”

Kelsang raised his eyes to look at the book.

It was a list of names. Names from all over the world. There were Earth Kingdom officials—from all levels of the country’s government. Famous criminals. Fire Nation nobles. Water Tribe merchants.

One name caught his attention.

It had to be an Air Nomad name—one of the characters it was written with meant something like “whirling, circling dance,” lofty and airy and poetic in the way airbenders were apt to name themselves. But that wasn’t why he zeroed in on it.

It had been hastily scratched out.

Did that mean this person, whoever they were, had somehow managed to nullify whatever contract they had forged with this spirit? He could imagine some wise old airbender, perched on a mountain peak somewhere, with quite the story to tell about the time they’d died and met a spirit who tried to take advantage of them, and through some clever logic, tricked the spirit back, and freed themselves, and had gone on to live a long and fulfilling life.

He stared at the names—all of them—knowing there must be some importance in knowing which notable people of the world were afflicted with this thing. Knowing he must find this airbender when he woke up. But like much of this, the name—and its significance—would be lost to him when he woke up again.

He steeled himself and met the spirit’s eyes.

“Half a percent,” he said.

Although the great spider-bat’s features could not have possibly made an expression betraying a human emotion, something like amusement graced its body language.

“Half?” it purred as the space between continued to crumble. “Why should I accept half?”

Kelsang knew no deal he made with this spirit would be fair, but it would be stupid not to at least negotiate. Maybe somewhere down the line, when he woke up and remembered this and the true significance dawned on him—he could begin to devise a way to beat the spirit at its own game. Seven minutes wasn’t very much time. Maybe he could mitigate it, or plan for it somehow. Was that arrogant? To believe he was smart enough to trick a spirit?

“Because if I die, you get nothing,” he said with false confidence. He had no way of knowing if his individual contract with this spirit bore any importance to it whatsoever. Perhaps every dying person met this spirit. Perhaps very few did. Perhaps these contracts held great value fundamental to this spirit’s existence. Perhaps they held next to none, and souls were more like stones collected by a streambed. How could he comprehend the motivations of something incomprehensible to his mortal mind? It was a gamble, but he wasn’t about to take the deal without trying for something better.

More shards rained down around them. The floor threatened to crumble out from under him.

“I will accept half,” Panggu decided, and nudged the book towards him. “Sign.”

He started looking around for a writing utensil, and then quickly realized that the faded rust brown of the existing signatures made it quite clear what he was supposed to do. His hand was already bloody. After one last moment of hesitation, he took a finger to the page and hastily scribbled in his mark. When he looked up again, the crumbling shards of the walls and floor had frozen in time, hovering in midair as if suspended by some invisible line. A snapshot before disaster.

When he’d finished, the spirit turned the book back towards itself to examine the new name.

“I see,” it said slowly, and then inclined its head upward to look at him again. “Thank you for your cooperation…Kelsang.”

Kelsang didn’t remember blacking out, or waking up. Or anything about what had just transpired.

All he knew was that he was now suffering from the worst headache of his life.

Chapter Text

Chai Li had never been so happy to see solid ground in his life.

The group was in rough shape. In the chaos of it all, he hadn’t seen exactly what had happened. One moment he was in the boat with Klo, the next, he was airborne, tumbling head over tail until the storm saw fit to skip him across the water’s surface like a stone. His body still ached from the impact, but he was fortunate in that he hadn’t fallen far.

The others had not been so lucky.

Kelsang and Flamer were lucky to be alive. They had both been unconscious when the others found them. Flamer’s leg had been skewed through by a large, jagged splinter from one of their destroyed boats, which luckily, plugged the wound and slowed the bleeding. But Klo also suspected breaks in several of his limbs, plus any other internal damage that they couldn’t see.

And Kelsang…

At first they thought they were too late. He’d been floating in a slowly expanding patch of red, unresponsive, until Klo took a closer look and realized he was still breathing. Chai Li had no idea what kind of healing they were teaching up North or what she’d done to save him. Every healer he’d ever seen had used softly glowing water to mend superficial wounds and accelerate the healing process for deeper ones. But there had been none of that—just her fingers dancing deftly above his head. Had he just missed it? Whatever she’d done, for her to bring Kelsang back from the brink of death, it must be pretty damn good.

Still, the prognosis wasn’t great. Judging from the blood leaking from his ears, the storm had cracked his head into the hard surface of the water like an egg. Trying to set realistic expectations, Klo solemnly remarked that if he ever woke up, he might not be the same.

After finding Syntagma clinging to a piece of driftwood (with that stupid chest, of course), shaken but otherwise unharmed, Chai Li and Klo had done their best to lash together some of the larger boat pieces into a raft, and with their injured companions on board, they kicked towards the shore.

About halfway there, Chai Li had gotten his first glimpse of a ribbed, red and green fin disappearing beneath the waves.

Please no, he thought desperately. I did not survive that tornado just to get eaten by a serpent instead.

They stopped, worried the splashing and kicking was drawing the serpent’s attention. But it had already noticed, and Chai Li could see its sleek form circling them slowly in the depths below. He had the crazy idea that maybe he could mindbend the thing to leave them alone, and he reached out, brushing against some other consciousness beneath the waves, and then tried to penetrate it. 

He was met with a flood of intense, animalistic desire. Desire, all across the spectrum. Food, territory, sex. The emotions driving this creature were primordial and raw. Chai Li wouldn’t even know where to begin. How did one negotiate with a mind so singularly driven? He would have to settle, maybe, for drawing its attention elsewhere.

Or, just be really lucky.

Right as he felt the creature’s drive shift towards blood and hunting and consuming, more chaos erupted. A second serpent ambushed the first from below, bursting past the surface with its jaws clamped firmly around the neck of the first. The wounded serpent let out a shrill, otherworldly shriek.

“Go! Go go go!” Chai Li yelled, and three able bodied benders kicked as hard as they could towards the shore.

Now, they were sprawled out on a rocky beach somewhere along the lake’s northern shore, broken, but alive. They had no supplies, no shelter. Everyone was dripping wet, and the sun was setting. The cold of the Earth Kingdom’s semi-arid interior would set in soon.

“We need help,” Chai Li said.

“Agreed,” Klo nodded. She was tending to Kelsang and Flamer, checking them for injuries she’d missed while they were all treading water. “I can only do so much with my waterbending. They need to see a real doctor. Both of them.”

Chai Li moved his hand to his pocket to pull out his map, only to find a mushy mess that fell apart in his fingers as soon as he pulled on it. Whelp…

The Serpent’s Pass rose menacingly off to their right, which meant they were indeed on the north side of the lake somewhere. But all around them was thorny scrubland and spindly desert grasses growing from rocky, sandy earth—certainly not a landscape attractive for farming or easily traversable by carts or wagons. 

“I’ll go scout,” he decided. “Maybe I can find a road or something.”

Klo nodded absently, occupied with her two patients. 

Syntagma, meanwhile, was hunched over his chest, sorting through the contents. Most of the paper within had been waterlogged and was starting to disintegrate, but the old man had set aside a few that were potentially salvageable. He was muttering and cursing to himself, something about having to ditch his money pouch because it was too heavy. Chai Li grimaced. They had all nearly died, and here was Syntagma, more concerned with his money, as always. 

“Syntagma,” Chai Li said, trying to keep the disgust out of his voice. “Why don’t you bend up a shelter or something?”

“Just a sec,” Syntagma answered, continuing to fret over whatever was in that stupid box.

Something in Chai Li snapped. He marched over and slammed the box shut, nearly catching Syntagma’s blocky fingers.

“Hey!”

“Go. Help. Klo.” He growled, his knuckles turning white as his fingers tightened on the box lid. Syntagma glared at him, but when he finally figured out that Chai Li wasn’t going to move, he got up, muttering something about ‘kids these days,’ and waddled over to Klo’s makeshift hospital. Chai Li glared hot daggers into the back of the man’s head, and didn’t leave until he’d at least seen Syntagma make a half-hearted effort to raise some walls to block the wind, then he stomped off into the scrubland.

Thorny bushes found purchase in the sandy, dry soil. Some kind of sprawling succulent covered the ground where it wasn’t bare, growing on top of the dry husks of previous generations. Loose stones clacked under his shoes when he wasn’t trudging through sand. The landscape rose upwards into gently rolling, rocky hills, uninterrupted by man’s intrusions. No buildings or roads. Maybe, he thought, if he could get up a bit higher, he could see some sign of civilization.

He started up the nearest hill, his legs protesting and threatening to give out with every step. He was already exhausted from fighting and swimming and being generally terrified, and the landscape refused to yield to him. His feet scrabbled and slipped on the loose gravel, and thorny plants tore at his legs, making every step feel like it took him further backwards than forwards. His legs burned and his eyes strained in the fading light. Every minor setback added to the snowball. 

Maybe Kelsang had a point about the Avatar. Where on earth were they, and why didn’t Dai Li tell him anything about them? After all, he had eyes and ears everywhere, so surely he knew? And who did this group of people Chai Li was traveling with think they were, anyway, trying to fill the void? They weren’t friends. They all had their doubts about Juno and Dai Li and each other. Most of them were in it for their own reasons of greed or pride or whatever. None of them were even particularly strong benders, and look where it had gotten them—half dead and washed up on a remote beach. Chai Li could hardly even be called a bender, and he was doing a poor job of making up for it in other ways. He couldn’t even make it up this hill!

He slid back several feet on a patch of unstable, gritty ground, sharp edges tearing up his hands as he tried to slow himself. When he was finally done sliding, and the rocks were done pelting his abused hands on their way down, he stared down at his bleeding fingers, watching the edges blur as the first hot tears spilled over his cheeks to mix with his blood.

How pathetic he was. Had Dai Li somehow seen signs of this weakness in him and cut him out of his plans because of it? Had he known, somehow, that Juno would confront him and test his loyalty? Was this whole journey just a means to be rid of him? Were the spirits trying, for some reason, to drive him towards some miserable death here?

He shook his head. Even as much as Chai Li wanted to blame someone else for the day’s events, deep down he knew that despite all the power and influence he held, even Dai Li couldn’t control the weather. 

The thought did little to assuage his fears of inadequacy. There was still the question of why Dai Li hadn’t filled him in on the details of his grand plan, and what other “misfortunes” might befall him when Dai Li inevitably found out Chai Li was doubting him. Somehow, the thought scared him back into movement, as if Dai Li’s all-seeing eye might be watching him even now.

Finally, he made it to the top. In the fading light, he could just see the torchlights of a village in the distance. What did he owe to Klo and Syntagma and the others anyway? Why go out of his way for them? He could just as easily abandon them here, go to the village, get a message to Dai Li, and inform him of Juno’s attempt to recruit him into her ranks. And the desert would likely take care of the rest.

…But he wouldn’t feel good about it. It was something his father would have done. But not him.

Darkness blanketed the landscape by the time he made it back to the beach. At least there was one small glimmer of hope—the last stretch of his journey was made significantly easier by the light of a flickering flame in the distance, and upon arriving back at the beach, he was greeted by Flamer’s delirious, but alive smile.

“There he is!” the firebender said, throwing his hands up gleefully. He was propped up against a rock with his injured leg elevated, the campfire flickering nearby as testament to his relative recovery. Klo had removed the piece of wood from his thigh and, Chai Li assumed, done her best to remove any splinters, but with no supplies other than the clothes on their backs, she’d been forced to bandage the wound with a strip of her own pant leg. Infection was still a real concern.

“Did you find anything?” Klo asked hopefully. 

“There’s a village a few miles from here,” he said, and he saw the three of them perk up at the news. He bit his lip. “But…the terrain is really rough. I don’t know how we’re going to move the injured.”

Klo visibly deflated, her shoulders sinking as she let out a long breath. 

“How’s he doing?” Chai Li asked after a pause, gesturing towards the unconscious airbender. Kelsang was laid out, motionless, on a bed of grass with Klo’s coat draped over him.

“I…have no idea,” she admitted. “I stopped the bleeding but…we won’t know until—or if—he wakes up.”

Chai Li hung his head solemnly. 

“Well, the village is still good news!” Klo said shakily, as if trying to reassure herself. “We can’t do anything right now in the dark. Maybe in the morning we can find a way to move him, or one of us can go to the village and find a doctor and bring them here.”

“Yeah,” Chai Li sighed. His eyes drifted towards Syntagma, who had been awfully silent. Usually he had an opinion on everything, but for now, he was quiet, sitting by the fire and quite literally twiddling his thumbs. At least he’d bent up some stone walls around them to block the wind and keep the heat in. Maybe the reality of the situation was finally beginning to dawn on him.

That night, everyone huddled as close as they could to the fire. Although the dry air had quickly stolen the moisture from their clothes, the temperature had dropped just as quickly once the sun sank below the horizon. Chai Li found himself curled up with his eyes shut, but still keenly aware of each breath. Sleep never truly found him.

He was the first to rise when the crunch of feet on gravel drew close.

Two shadowy forms stepped around Syntagma’s walls, illuminated faintly by the dying embers of Flamer’s campfire. Chai Li recognized the long, feathered neck of an ostrich-horse, ending in the creature’s square head and long beak. The creature blinked at him, sideways.

A man dressed in the mismatched metal plates and leather armor of a local Earth Kingdom village guard slid off its back, his bare feet impacting the pebbly ground with enough force to jolt the rest of the group from their fitful sleep. Chai Li winced, remembering how the same gravel had left his hands bleeding and scabbed earlier. The second man slid off his bird to join the first.

“What are you all doing here?” the first man asked, looking out from beneath the brim of his headpiece with stern eyes.

The hapless travelers glanced around blearily, hoping someone else would answer. Chai Li watched as the guards’ scowls intensified, and Klo finally spoke up.

“We were out on the lake,” she said, taking a neutral, diplomatic tone. “And got caught in the storm. Some of our companions are hurt.” She gestured to Kelsang’s unconscious body, and Flamer, who had his fists raised like he was ready to fight, but swayed as he sat up too quickly.

“That’s unfortunate,” the guard said plainly. “But you’re trespassing. You can’t camp here without paying the fee.”

“Fee?” Syntagma, of all people, asked incredulously. “You’re charging people to camp on this shoddy, remote beach?”

For once, Chai Li thought, Syntagma was right. Disregarding, for a moment, the guards’ total lack of concern for injured civilians, this was a terrible place for a recreational campsite. There was no dock, no nice places to sit, no footpaths to any other amenities. That same anger that had been directed at Syntagma’s callousness yesterday, began to bubble up again in his stomach, this time at the guards.

“What fee?” he asked. “How did you even find us all the way down here?”

“This is a private beach,” the second guard broke in, ignoring his questions. “For paying customers or residents of Mirage Village only.”

“Mirage?” Chai Li echoed, ignoring the guard right back. He’d had enough of others’ lack of human decency lately. “Is that its name? Can you help us take our injured friends there for treatment?” And he gestured, perhaps a little too fervently, towards Flamer and Kelsang, forcefully projecting his own desire to help his friends onto the two guards. 

The guards exchanged glances with wide, dilated pupils. The others would chalk it up to the low light, but Chai Li knew better.

“Zhu won’t like it,” one of them remarked to the other.

“He won’t care as long as the debt is paid,” the other replied. 

There was a pregnant silence as the two guards seemed to weigh some unspoken risk between them. Then they turned back to the broken travelers.

“We’ll take you to Mirage,” the ranking guard decided. “But you’ll have to work off the debt for the camp, and for medical treatment.”

“Sure!” Klo said agreeably. “Whatever we have to do to get some help.” It seemed she and Chai Li were on the same page when it came to their urgent need for help, but the whole situation had him worried. Why were the guards so fixated on the “fee?”

“Very well,” said the first guard. “We can carry the injured, but the rest will have to walk.”

“Ugggh,” Syntagma groaned, and Chai Li and Klo both shot him a fierce look. He sank back like a moonflower at sunrise.

The guards wouldn’t let them wait until morning, so within a few minutes, they had devised a way to secure Kelsang and Flamer to the ostrich-horses, and they were off, stumbling across the rough landscape in the dark. Chai Li couldn’t be sure how long the journey took. He simply gripped a strap on the ostrich-horse’s saddle as it ambled along and let it pull him along with it. The birds were surprisingly adept at navigating the unforgiving ground, and he wondered how he had missed the signs of their passage before. Had there even been any? He hadn’t noticed any snapped branches or footprints or droppings, so maybe the guards had truly found them by pure chance. Then again, as he was raised by a noble, and Chai Li had never been party to a traditional hunt, like many of his countrymen. In that regard, his tracking and nature skills were severely lacking.

They arrived in the village named Mirage in the wee hours of the morning. It was a small, walled settlement, rising out of the semi-arid landscape like—well—a mirage. They had passed no fields or other signs of agriculture, so Chai Li had no idea what its residents did for a living. It was quiet, as it should be, this time of night.

The guards dropped them off outside the village inn, with no further instructions other than, “Talk to Maika.”

“Zhu will want to talk to you in the morning,” the ranking guard told them.

“Who’s Zhu?” Klo asked.

“The village chief,” the second guard answered flatly. “He’ll get you sorted out.”

“Thank you,” Klo said, giving a shallow bow, for too deep a bow would have surely indebted the Northern Water Tribe as soon as this ‘Zhu’ person found out who she was. “Thank you for your kindness.”

“Don’t mention it,” said the second guard, giving her a nod of acknowledgement. “Go talk to Maika, so we can get your friends situated.”

Klo tasked Syntagma with staying outside with the guards, Kelsang, and Flamer, while she and Chai Li went inside to talk to this Maika person. 

Inside, there was a bland lobby with a couple of chairs and a few pieces of probably-local artwork hanging crookedly on the walls. There was a desk, which Chai Li assumed was for the receptionist, but there was no one there. He and Klo got a bit closer, and discovered a note next to a little bell on the desk. “Ring for service,” it said. They exchanged a glance, and Chai Li took a step back, letting his senior countryman take the reins on this one. Klo frowned, but took the little bell and rang it.

There was silence for a moment, then a bit of shuffling from the back room. A moment later, a young woman dressed in the drab brown of the Earth Kingdom, except for the distinctly bright red hood she wore over her head, poked her head out from a curtain behind the front desk. Her eyes were outlined by dark, sleepless circles. She didn’t say anything, but eyed the two of them and waited for them to state their business.

“We, uh, need a place to stay,” Klo said, looking around for someone—anyone—else to help them, but when none appeared, she settled on looking at the woman pleadingly. “Are you…Maika?”

The womans’ eyes scanned Klo’s shredded Water Tribe furs from beneath her hood.

“Yes…” she said slowly. “I’m the quartermaster.”

“Great!” Klo said, still smiling. She waited, but Maika didn’t move. Instead, the quartermaster’s shadowed eyes had moved to Chai Li and were dissecting him with the same clinical coldness of a scientist studying an insect. Time stretched out for a long, anguished moment, and Chai Li’s blood ran inexplicably cold under her gaze.

Then Klo cleared her throat, and Maika’s eyes shifted back to her with no explanation as to why she’d been so fixated on Chai Li. “Just the two of you?” she asked.

Chai Li found his own throat frozen, and was thankful when Klo stepped in to handle the rest of the conversation.

“Actually,” Klo said, “there’s five of us.”

The quartermaster blinked slowly, then looked down at some unseen logbook behind the desk. “So…one room or two?” she asked boredly.

“...Two?” Klo asked uncertainly, the hesitance of her answer drawing Maika’s narrowed eyes back up to her.

“Do you know where you are?” the quartermaster asked suddenly.

Klo froze, her lips quivering for a moment before finding words again. “M-Mirage? Mirage Village, right?”

“Yes,” Maika said. “And do you know what happens if you check in here?”

Klo shifted to look at Chai Li, as if he was any less confused than she was. They both shook their heads. 

“You’ll owe a debt,” she said, and Chai Li felt the tension in his shoulders ease. He had been expecting something far worse. 

…Why had he been expecting something worse?

“Well, yeah, we expected that,” Klo said. “Nothing’s free of course.”

“Of course,” Maika said. She moved her gaze from them and lifted a hand to write something in the logbook, but paused. “---But if there’s anywhere else you can go…you should.”

Ominous, Chai Li thought, but everything about this interaction so far had been deeply uncomfortable. Klo, too, blinked with confusion, but she must have noticed his fidgeting, because her voice finally found some confidence as she tried to end the conversation. “We don’t have a choice. Our friends are hurt.”

“...That’s unfortunate,” Maika said with the exact same, flat disinterest of the guard from earlier, her attention back on the logbook. “You’re in rooms 103 and 104. Zhu will come to speak with you in the morning.” 

“Thank you,” Klo said, bowing shallowly from the waist again, but the quartermaster, evidently too tired or annoyed for formalities, slid a couple of keys across the desk, then simply muttered an “uh huh,” and disappeared into the back room, her robes sweeping behind her.

Klo winced, and turned sheepishly to Chai Li. “Did I say something bad?” she whispered.

“No,” Chai Li said, shaking his head quickly and nudging Klo towards the door. “It’s late. I’m sure she’s just tired.”

There was always the possibility that it had something to do with Chai Li and Klo being obvious foreigners. Some places in the Earth Kingdom could be a bit…unwelcoming…in that sense. He had always hated running missions in those sorts of places. No matter how good his disguise was or how well he altered his mannerisms to fit in, some people in small towns such as this sniffed out those who didn’t belong with the efficiency of a blood eel-hound. He simply couldn’t replicate the small town familiarity of someone who had grown up there, and even if he could, his Water Tribe blue eyes would raise suspicion with anyone observant enough to notice. He and Klo had shown up in tattered Water Tribe clothes with no money and covered in dirt, so one need not be the most observant to notice that they didn’t belong.

And yet, Maika’s attitude towards them hadn’t quite been suspicion or hostility, but it wasn’t quite the annoyance of an overworked employee who just hated their job, either. He found himself shaking his head. What did it matter, anyway? At least they had a place to stay now.

The two guards escorted them to their rooms, and Chai Li bit back the thought that they were being treated a bit like undesirables here. He wondered if the village guard would be monitoring their rooms to make sure none of the “outsiders” snuck out to go burglarizing homes under the cover of darkness, too?

Klo insisted on staying near Kelsang and Flamer, in case one of them took a turn overnight—what was left of it, anyway. The pale glow of dawn was beginning to creep in from the eastern horizon. Chai Li agreed to bunk with Syntagma, and so the two of them settled down onto the soft, lumpy beds. Despite the whole place smelling of a mix of smoke, mildew, and stale alcohol, Chai Li felt it would be rude to sleep in the bed with his dirty clothes, so he peeled them off and laid them out neatly on the floor, hoping some air might help rid them of his own funk.

The villagers, at least, were merciful enough to let them sleep for a few hours after sunrise. It took several knocks to rouse him from his sleep, and even then, Syntagma, who had slept in his dirty clothes, got to the door first.

“What do you want, girl?”

Ah, must be Maika. Chai Li tried not to imagine the look of absolute hatred she was surely giving Syntagma as he hastily gathered his clothes. Laying them out had done little more than let the sweat dry, which had only made them gross and crusty with salt. Grimacing, he pulled them on, doubtful about making a good impression on the village chief in this state.

“Zhu is here to see you,” he heard Maika say. Indeed, the chatter of voices drifted to his ears from outside, Klo’s among them. 

“We’re coming,” Chai Li called, and after pulling on his second boot, he shoved Syntagma out the door and towards the voices before he could do any more damage to their relationship with the reluctant quartermaster.

“Ah, good to see you!” Zhu, Chai Li presumed, greeted them. Chai Li could feel Syntagma’s judgment of the man radiating off of him. He was somewhere around Flamer’s age, the skin around his eyes and the corners of his mouth beginning to crease. Gray lines streaked the otherwise dark hairs of his upper lip, which melded seamlessly into his beard. The rest of his hair was gathered into a topknot and held in place by a brass hairpiece. He couldn’t be sure what all this meant to Syntagma exactly, but it was clear the man was evaluating the cut and color of Zhu’s robes and trying to place him within some mental Earth Kingdom hierarchy. “My guards tell me you arrived quite late last night.”

“Yeah,” Syntagma grunted, and Chai Li stiffened, already gathering from the old man’s tone exactly what was about to come next. “I barely got a wink of sleep in that stinky old inn of yours.”

Chai Li and Klo exchanged knowing glances.

“Oh,” Zhu frowned, and Chai Li felt a mix of puzzlement and amusement coming off of him. “I’m sorry it wasn’t to your specifications, Mister…?”

“Syntagma,” Syntagma stated, crossing his arms and waiting, clearly expecting his name to carry some weight here.

“Mister Syntagma,” Zhu affirmed, nodding, but giving no indication that the name meant anything to him at all. “I’m quite sorry. I’ll have Maika take a look at the rooms today.”

Next to him, the quartermaster’s eyes narrowed venomously beneath her hood.

Indeed, Syntagma was doing a great job keeping a positive relationship with her.

“Anyway,” Zhu said, dark eyes scanning the group. “As I’m sure you’re all aware, accommodations aren’t free. Neither is medical care.”

“We’re well aware,” Klo said, biting her lip. “But you see, we lost everything in the storm. I was hoping we could work something out? Syntagma comes from money. Maybe he could—”

“Work it out?” Zhu echoed, cutting her off. A smile tugged at the edges of his mouth, but never quite manifested. “Let me explain something to all of you. In my village nothing is free. There are no handouts. If you wish to stay here, you must contribute something to the betterment of the village. You are already indebted, on account of your squatting on the beach and a night’s stay at the inn. I’d say, actually, you should be asking me, what it will take to pay it off.”

The group stared, completely taken aback by the sudden change in tone. Klo opened her mouth, then shut it again, no doubt thinking better of whatever she was about to say. She probably could have played the Chief card, or even threatened him with the North’s political weight. But with the man’s clear obsession with debt and usefulness, she must have worried she might become a bargaining chip if he discovered her identity, giving Zhu way more power in a negotiation with her diplomats than he deserved.

Syntagma, evidently, had no such worries.

“Do you know who I am?” the old earthbender asked, marching forward to get in Zhu’s personal space. He probably would have gotten in his face, if he could have, but Zhu still rose a head taller than the portly old man.

“Oh? Of course,” Zhu purred. “You’re Syntagma, as you said.”

“That name doesn’t ring a bell to you?” Syntagma demanded.

“It does,” Zhu admitted. “But if you think it has power here, you’re mistaken. No name has any value to me until it has proven its worth.”

“I have enough money to buy out your entire dinky village,” Syntagma sneered, jabbing a finger into Zhu’s chest. “That’s not enough for you?”

“Syntagma,” Klo shot him a warning glance.

“Not until I have the money in my hands,” Zhu smiled gleefully, and for a moment Chai Li thought Syntagma might actually start throwing punches, but a couple of Zhu’s guards walked up beside him in their clanking, ill-fitting armor at about the same time, and he seemed to think better of it. He sank back, seething, but powerless.

Zhu apparently felt the need to address the threatening body language anyway. “Of course, if working off your debt is below you, maybe a few nights in a prison cell will change your mind.”

“That won’t be necessary!” Klo said quickly, nudging Syntagma aside. “You know, since my friends still need medical attention, perhaps I could take them to your village healer? I’m a healer myself, so perhaps I could work off the debt by assisting them?”

“A good suggestion,” Zhu agreed, and he turned to one of the guards. “Will you help this young lady relocate her friends to the healer’s hut?” The guard grunted affirmatively and started towards the room, and Klo, not wanting to leave Kelsang and Flamer to the mercy of a possibly hostile stranger, hurried ahead of him to get the door. 

Zhu turned back to Chai Li and Syntagma. “Unfortunately, I have some other things I must attend to,” he said, feigning disappointment. “I’ll leave you with my assistant. I’m sure she can help you find some ways to make yourselves useful.” 

He slapped a hand onto the woman’s shoulder, causing her to inhale sharply. She held it until he walked away, and then let it out in a long, hot stream. Chai Li could practically see the steam leaving her nostrils. He waited until Zhu was out of earshot before addressing her.

“So, uh…” he ventured, drawing a frigid look from the quartermaster. “Thank you for helping us.”

“Don’t mention it,” she snorted. “Really.”

“I’ll say,” grumbled Syntagma. “Making guests work?” And Chai Li could tell that by “guests,” Syntagma really meant “powerful people.” Mostly meaning just him, as he doubted Syntagma saw any true value in the rest of them. Already, he could see the gears turning in the old earthbender’s mind, surely plotting all the ways he would bring Zhu to financial ruin when this was all over.

“You aren’t guests,” Maika said flatly.

“Then what are we?” Chai Li asked. “Prisoners?”

“Indentured servants,” Maika said. “Like everyone else who ended up here down on their luck.”

“Servants?” Syntagma sneered with contempt, marching over to Maika as if she could somehow change this arrangement. If he had been a bit taller, maybe he would have been more imposing, or maybe Maika was simply so desensitized to angry customers that his antics meant nothing, because she stared back at him unflinchingly and cut him off before he could launch into an entitled rant.

“You should have left when I told you to.”

“Is that what you meant?” Chai Li asked. “When you said if we had anywhere else to go, we should? That we’d be indentured if we didn’t?”

“You said you didn’t have a choice,” Maika answered. “Because you have injured friends, or whatever. Would you have gone marching across the desert with them if I’d told you?”

“Well—no,” Chai Li decided after a pause, “But it would have been nice to know!”

“Sorry,” Maika snorted without an ounce of remorse. “For their sake, I hope that girl is a half-decent healer.”

“What about us, then?” Syntagma demanded. “I have the money to pay.”

“With you?”

“No—”

“Then you’d better get over yourself,” Maika said. “Because without money, you’re powerless here.”

“You can’t make me do anything!” Syntagma went on.

Maika simply shrugged. “I don’t care. Do something. Do nothing. But Zhu’s guards will notice eventually, and you’re not paying off any debts from a prison cell.”

Syntagma continued to frown at her like it would compel her to offer him some kind of out, but the quartermaster merely crossed her arms and raised a challenging eyebrow at him. She was an overworked employee. What exactly did he want her to do?

“Maika,” Chai Li said politely, knowing he was about to broach a potentially touchy subject. “Are you also indentured?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

She paused. The wind stilled around them.

“Two months.”

“What happened?”

Her eyes drifted to Zhu’s guards, one of whom was carrying Kelsang out from the inn. Flamer limped along with one arm draped over the considerably shorter Klo’s shoulder. The other guard was watching Maika, Chai Li, and Syntagma with a steely gaze.

“We should go,” she said simply. “I have work for the two of you.”