The Impossible Tales of the Tea Shop
or
The Anger Games
Karo sat on the bleachers by the football field.
"Can you explain why you want to blow up my Magic Eight Ball?" Karo shivered as a cold fall breeze blew across the field. Autumn had settled into Ba Sing and Karo felt the cold. "My mom gave me that thing when I turned nine."
"Haven't you ever wondered what is inside it?" Azula held the red metal plunger in her hand.
"I can honestly answer 'no' to that." Karo shifted uncomfortably. "You spent a year at the Royal Fire Nation Academy for Girls and all you took from it was how to use blasting gel and drive a tank?"
"I made a baking soda volcano." Azula pulled up on the plunger. "For science and humanity!" She pressed the plunger down.
The explosion made a divot the size of a small car on the fifty yard line and the turf fell for half a minute.
"You could have written the company that makes them and ask how Magic Eight Balls get made." Karo felt the sharp tug of Azula's hand on his collar. "Ask if they have schematics and engineering drawings."
"CabbageCo told me it was a trade secret." Azula set out for the divot she had blasted in the field. "I wrote them a letter asking how it worked and why the dice were statistically biased in favor of 'Not a Chance'.
Karo looked around because a crawling nervous itch gave him the feeling that the principle or the football coach or both would soon come out of the school to yell at both of them.
"God help us if the technology for making eight sided dice float in blue goo fell into the wrong hands." Karo sighed. "Oh right, your hands are the wrong ones."
"What did you do to the football field!?" Principal Uyin yelled in astonishment. "How do you plan to fix that hole!?"
"Corpses of cheerleaders." Azula walked around the rim of the divot looking for pieces of Karo's toy glinting the late September sun. "Four of them ought to do."
The cheer leading squad had been in mid pyramid rehearsal when Azula's small explosion distracted those holding up the other cheer leaders and the head cheer leeder took an undignified bounce off the blond wood of the gym floor. She had her fists clenched and wanted answers for her sudden fall.
"Oh hello Bonnie." Karo picked up the white dice. "Some people have repressed their destructive impulses; Azula had not done so."
"Quiet you." Azula looked unto the hole. "I see Karo found the white dice that forms the heart of that mysterious device called the Magic Eight Ball."
"They marketed this thing as a novelty paperweight." Karo explained as he held up the dice.
"Quiet all of you!" Uyin shouted and his bald head turned red. "Since when does doing science involve destroying things young Miss Azula!?"
"My father, the psychiatrist, says such behavior signals deep psychotic tendencies." Bonnie sneered at Azula. Bonnie had a dislike of Azula and Azula had a deep indifference toward Bonnie. Bonnie had to find a delicate balance: she wanted to insult and degrade Azula but that almost always ended badly for her. "Maybe Azula can't attend a normal school.""You look uh...pissed Bonnie." Karo pulled on the lock on his locker.
"Do you know what your girlfriend just did to me?" Bonnie grabbed Karo's collar.
"Pulled a flick knife on you and stole your bento box?" Karo reached in his locker and searched for the sheet music he needed for band practice. "She blew up your Magic Eight Ball?"
"Last year we won the North District Cheer Leading Squad finals and so we had a trophy and we had a photo of the group next to our trophy!" Bonnie pulled out a photo with a gold frame from behind her back. "She drew a mustache on my picture!" She pointed indignantly at the picture on which someone had a penciled in Van Dyke on Bonnie's face that showed sign of talent (Azula wasn't that good at drawing such a convincing and anatomically correct set of facial hair). Bonnie was a physically strong teenage girl which explained why she lead the cheer leading team and how she could lift Karo with one hand.
"Can you put me down?" Karo asked in his ever calm and polite manner. "Please."
"She had grown jealous of my popularity." Bonnie set Karo back down on the ground.
"I have my doubts." Karo clutched his sheet music close to his chest. "Azula doesn't suffer fools very well and she does rash things but public defacement of the trophy case isn't her style. She dislikes you but is indifferent to your popularity." Karo closed his locker door quietly. "Well not that kind of petty vandalism. As we speak she's serving detention by spending band practice fixing that hole in the football field so you can talk about this with her."
Bonnie had her doubts about approaching Azula – like evolution, Azula took no prisoners. Azula had the manner of the sort of person who didn't consider the ethics of murder but thought a good deal about how to conceal evidence. She had chosen a time when Karo was alone because she wished to avoid confronting Azula; smarter than the average cheerleaders didn't confront Azula. Dumber than the average cheerleaders made fun of her and then suffered unspeakable emotional trauma. Bonnie understood somehow Azula kept the cheer leading team strong by weeding out the weak in some psychologically devious manner.
"Well you can draw." Bonnie said in an accusatory tone. "She could have put you up to this, this defacement!"
Karo closed his locker with one hand and gripped his oboe case.
"You can't hang murderers until you catch them." Karo recited the old proverb. "I have better things to do with my spare time than deface your face. I helped work on that trophy display for the squad so why would I ruin it?"
Bonnie had no real issues with the polite Karo except that she failed to understand why he had become friends with Azula and tolerated her venomous Bonnie." Azula's breath made fog in the air. Such a sight matched the tone of her words perfectly. Azula dumped a load of gravel into the crater and then hefted the wheel barrow and walked to the sidelines to retrieve more.
"Fuel oil and fertilizer makes an explosive." Azula told Bonnie. "I lost a bet to the chemistry club president. You came out to console me and offer me some friendly advice on taking defeat?"
"No!" Bonnie crossed her arms. "Every time I ask you a question, we end up in an argument. Someone defaced the photo of the cheer leading club in the trophy case! Since you think all cheer leaders are airheads and you hate them; I thought I'd ask you if you knew anything about it?"
"I don't know anything about it."
Bonnie walked beside Azula. Bonnie always found Azula intimidating but never dishonest. Azula was frighteningly intelligent and also very brave: she had endured the horrid conditions of a refugee camp and held onto her dignity.
"Look, Azula can we talk?" Bonnie asked quietly. "Katara speaks of you highly."
"You know you aren't as stupid as society led you to believe." Azula reached the gravel pile. "Katara likes cheer leading and we like playing music for you." Azula began shoveling. "You have two sisters, one is the medical student and one is the beauty and you ended up the youngest. You have no confidence in your own talents."
"How did you know?" Bonnie asked sadly.
"We use past yearbooks for inspiration." Azula said pleasantly. "I long wondered why you were so mean and I put much of it together...but if you want to solve this heinous crime against cheer leaders you can look somewhere else."
"So you know?" Bonnie said half covering her surprise.
"Hardly a secret but I do understand you somewhat." Azula heaped gravel in the wheelbarrow. "I would not have vandalized your picture in that photograph because you have had your own problems. I punish morons and you aren't a moron. You lead your classes in Suihan , Realm History and climb close to me in the rank for science. You've have the top grade in biology while I've been here."
"But you hate cheer leaders!?" Bonnie ejected.
"I hate people who don't think and that is all inclusive." Azula walked back to the hole she had made the day before. "If you had leaped to fewer conclusions; then you'd figure out the band geek who plays percussion did it."
"Hiei?" Bonnie had reasons to berate him. He had no talent for music and had often missed the timing during complicated cheers.
Azula pulled the wheel barrow."You do know..." Bonnie said in shock.
One of the indictments against Karo was his perfect – far too perfect for high school band – ear.
This time the kettle drums were flat – not at all audibly flat – but flat to the brain of Karo and so he tuned them.
He played the oboe but he hated the fact he could do little to tune the damn thing. He set the pitch for the rest of the band.
Dum dum dum de dum dum
This piece required felt tipped mallets.
Dum...dum...
Azula flicked her finger against the top of the drum.
"I thought you were doomed to fill a hole." Karo tapped the drum head with the felt mallet.
"The great thing about manual labor is that if you do it badly then they find some wage slave who gets paid to do it badly and shut up." Azula had flexibility as a musician.
"If you had planned on yelling at the percussionist then you may be disappointed." Azula sat in the chair. "He went out sleepwalking and one of the trams hit him. He has a six week stay in the broken bone and ruptured spleen resort. Or he may be dead...they don't tell us that"
"No I didn't...when did someone plan to tell me?" Karo adjusted the screws holding the drum head.
"A tram ran over him." Azula picked up the mallets. "I just told you know the percussionist can't attend rehearsals."
"I feel rather sad for him." Karo straightened up and cracked his back.
"Don't. He has a nice bed and the nurses are filling him up with as much heroin as he can handle." Azula tapped Karo's head with the felt mallets. "In any event, he'll be back tormenting you in the key of A Flat before your ears quit ringing."
Why is the entire string section looking at me like I'm a monster." Azula tapped the drum head and managed to please Karo's demanding ear. "He got run over by a bus – well a tram – that means he had to ignore the bells and decide to cross at the exact wrong moment. Quit looking at me like I'm a monster! You can visit him in hospital!" Azula glared back. "I'd like to end my life thinking – what bus? Wham! Knowing my luck, I'll be in a bank and take a round to the head wondering why a six foot tall fat man with a revolver has come to the bank donning a Kyoshi Warrior mask." She tapped the drum head with the felt mallet. "And I'll be overdrawn!"
Karo recorded this as one of the Azula moments in his life.
Azula played a familiar funeral dirge on the kettle drums.
Police tape hung across the intersection where the bank and the tea shop stood. The boy had lived with his family in a flat above the bank. The city transit company and the police had the corner completely blocked off as they collected information to shed light why a tram had hit a teenage boy at four in the morning. The intersection had a the look of an archeological survey site. Azula had seen crime scenes before and she always felt the temptation to sneak in and mix up the signs with the numbers on them.
"You think Iroh has had lots of police business?" Karo looked mournfully at the yellow police tape. "Why are they making such a big production out of this accident?"
Azula shivered as a cold autumn breeze rushed past her.
"A teenage boy got run over by a tram at four in the morning." Azula followed the alley down the back of the tea shop. "That doesn't happen in the normal course of events. Usually drunk pub crawlers get struck by trams at four in the morning. In any event, the transit company probably wants to know if they will get sued, the parents want to know if they can sue and the lawyers want to know if they will get paid."
Azula shoved her key into the back door lock. "I need a cup of tea."
Iroh worked in the kitchen and Karo smelled the familiar smell of baked goods and tea and coffee.
"Welcome home...you heard about the accident this morning?" Iroh greeted the duo. "One of the policemen said he went to your school; did you know him?"
He played percussion in the school band." Karo said apologetically. "I didn't know him well...what about you Azula?"
"Not at all well," Azula thought back, "he didn't like Karo and so we didn't talk much."
"What did Karo do?" Iroh had trouble believing the mild mannered Karo could offend anyone.
"Karo has a demanding ear and most band students don't." Azula looked over Iroh's shoulder as he chopped ginger for a stir fry.
He dropped the ginger into the wok and the oil flared up.
"I don't think I said a word to him about his playing." Karo scratched his forehead. "I didn't like his playing but the band teacher kept passing him."
"You winced each time he was off." Azula stepped back. "Anyway we came for a cup of tea and a muffin."
"The police have been coming in the tea shop all day." Iroh settled down to making one or more evening courses for his rush hour business and the woks sizzled as tea pots and coffee pots hissed and burbled. "They may have some questions for you."
Karo and Azula sat down at the Pai Sho table. Tea shop service was never fast and the sudden surge of business from the cops made it even slower. Katara often helped to earn extra money but had not yet returned from her cheer leading class.
"What did Iroh mean when he said the police might have questions for us?" Karo said uneasily as he moved a purple Pai Sho piece. "We only found out the news an hour ago and we still know nothing except what some other student heard."
"They have no clue why a teenage boy ran in front of a tram and so they've decided to ask as many people as possible." Azula replied with a strategic move to block Karo. "During the War, the police worked under the Dai Lee. Now they want to prove to the public they have been 'rehabilitated' and now serve the public. They hope to be seen doing their job properly to earn back the trust of the public."
Azula had studied the modern history of the city. The Dai Lee acted as the main counterespionage organ during the War and had unofficial control over both military and the police forces. Officially charged with fighting spies; their ambitious Chief Officer – Long Feng – took a broad perspective of his duties which included keeping tabs on the population at large lest they have any allegiances to the enemies of the city and he had a network of terror to keep the population under control.
Karo knew this first hand for his mother had undergone interrogation more than once: that he had come from the Dominion and not Fire Nation likely spared her more trouble. They had her uner observation and on file but had bigger fish to fry than a mother and her young son. The Dai Lee interrogated those they wished to watch; they jailed those their tribunals had suspected of espionage and those who did conduct espionage ended up in a drum and went to the bottom of Lake Laogai. The Dominion of Suihan had allied with the Fire Nation and they had long had very close relations but The Dominion had never declared war on Ba Sing Se and had never landed combat troops in the Earth Kingdom. Karo didn't trust the police although only those who had no record of Dai Lee service or had been rehabilitated remained in the present day force. Karo had often wondered what 'rehabilitated' meant: he knew a court could find someone not guilty, but he heard a vagueness in the word 'rehabilitated'.
Karo looked to the kitchen door as he impatiently waited for tea.
The next day, Karo had a new percussionist and had the task of running off copies of the sheet music for the school band using the school mimeograph machine. Karo had done this errand many times and wondered if the wood alcohol fumes could make him high and if this could be illegal. He knew copying music was a violation of copyright laws in most countries but this was a justified crime given the purchase cost of forty or fifty copies of most of the pieces the band wished to play.
A police officer entered the mimeograph room as Karo cranked away at band scores.
"Karo Zhao?" The tall lanky man asked politely as he licked the end of his pencil. "My name is Officer Gosang. I'm investigating the death of your colleague, Hiei Inoie. I understand he belonged to the school band."
"Well...he was one of the percussion players and played the kettledrums." Karo stopped cranking out scores. "I didn't know him all that well."
"Did you ever talk with him?" The police officer wrote down note in a notepad.
Karo pondered the question. "Not outside of the band; well at least nothing comes to mind."
"Here's my card," the officer handed a business card to Karo, "if you can tell us more please feel free to call the number."
The officer began to leave the room and then turned back: "I understand you are Azula's cousin. Could you kindly direct me to where she might be?"
"Can you kindly tell me why you want to talk to her?" Azula strolled into the mimeograph room just as Gosang completed that sentence: she had overheard everything while she waited at the door.
"Are you Azula?" Gosang asked politely.
"Yes...what can I do for you?" Azula held a folder in her hands.
"Allow me to introduce myself, I'm Officer Gosang."
"Did you know Hiei Inoie?" Gosang licked his pencil again.
"Only from band." Azula answered blankly as she tossed the folder onto the counter where the mimeograph machine stood. "He took the same history class I took." Azula shrugged. "This is a big high school and I see lots of names in the yearbooks of people I've met."
Karo continued cranking the mimeograph.
"Karo sat at the study hall table with the newspaper in his hands as Azula looked at him and then sat down opposite to him.
"The whole school has been in a funk since Hiei's death." Azula sat down with a lukewarm cup of tea.
"Death doesn't seem real to teenagers and no one knows why Hiei died." Karo placed the wooden newspaper holder down on the varnished plywood study hall table. "Tomorrow afternoon, the principal has a school assembly planned to memorialize him. Attendance is mandatory."
"People are grumpy." Azula complained. "Maybe they've always been that way and I've just been to self involved to notice."
"You? Self involved?" Karo picked up his newspaper once more. "Anyhow, we're rich middle upper class kids who don't die under mysterious circumstances. They still have no answers or at least none have been printed in the newspaper."
"Why would you walk into a tram at four in the morning?" Azula asked as she fidgeted with the folder she had had since yesterday when Karo met her in the copy room.
"Gosang wants to know that as well." Karo flipped the page. "The latest research found the onset of mental illnesses begin in the teenage years. Perhaps he had begun to develop psychological problems and decided to end it all? My mom offered that up as a theory."
"Quantum mechanics has a certain precise uncertainty." Azula had seen shrinks and they offered up as many theories as to her neuroses as her father hoped her seizures came out of something psychological (as if that could be fixed with training or discipline). She regarded psychology as a lots worse than mere astrology: astrologers charged less for a session. "Psychologists have their own prejudices and then make observations to fit those preconceptions. A church pastor with a sincere character can do more to help because he may have a preconception about his faith in God but he's intellectually honest about this."
"In other words, you don't know." Karo placed the paper on the table.
"The evidence isn't in yet." Azula told Karo. "I'm not collecting the evidence for or against any theory about why Hiei did what he did." She looked around the study hall. The tall windows and autumn sun warmed up the whole hall and gave the place a cheerful feel but this day the mood was glum and she didn't hear the usual murmur of gossiping teenage voices that filled the hall on such days.
"You know people have been killed by baseballs?" Karo's breath formed a fog through his catcher's mask. Azula decided to take out her frustrations out on innocent baseballs so she 'borrowed' the school pitching machine and set Karo out as catcher and ball fetcher. "That last fast ball could have struck me in the chest and made my heart stop."
"I could hit you in the head with the bat as well." Azula readied her swing and stared out in the late afternoon sun at the machine as she waited for it to belch out a ball. "You may not die but you could wind up with a brain injury that leaves you unable to recognize objects...or if your lucky ...speak."
Whack!
Azula sent a grounder straight down the first base lane.
Katara calmly plucked it as it bounced across the outfield with her bare hands.
"You two missed out on a stirring tribute to the life of Hiei Inoie." Katara tossed the ball to Karo. "The principal gave a speech and then after the assembly told me to tell you two – one week of detention."
"A bare handed catch of a grounder with some fire on it." Azula tapped the bat against her boots. "Impressive."
Karo triggered the next ball by stepping on a metal pedal just behind him connected to the blue metal pitching machine shaped like a dumpster and connected to Karo's pedal by a thick cable. He had a few seconds to ready himself.
Azula prepared her swing and Katara stepped back because Azula had a strong right arm and could send balls over the fence and the football bleachers.
Crack!
Azula shaded her eyes from the glare of the fall sun and watched as she flied out to right field.
"I saw quite a few students leaving." Azula twirled her bat. "I had some thinking to do and I needed the peace and quiet of the baseball diamond." She kicked dirt off her shoes with the bat.
Karo lifted his catchers mask. "What kind of glowing tribute?"
"A few of the teachers spoke." Katara knew she had been caught in a verbal act of hyperbole. "He started at the school at the beginning of this year."
Azula walked to the fence and tested another bat. She swung it and twirled it and then decided on her old bat.
"None of the students spoke?" Azula tapped the plate.
"Bonnie spoke a few words." Katara backed away again.
Karo pulled down his mask and readied his mitt. "Interesting."
Crack!
Azula watched a grounder bounce down the first base line and rubbed her chin. "I wonder why I keep pulling to the right?"
"Did Bonnie know the guy?" Karo tried to keep the conversation on topic.
Karo adjusted his catcher's gear.
"She leads the cheerleaders and the student council." Azula made a few swings and activated the pitching machine. She swung and the ball went high and foul and hit the top of the infield fence. "She had to say some boilerplate; kind of like a Masonic funeral. She doesn't normally talk to anyone out of her clique."
Karo fetched the ball and tossed it in his mitt.
"So...what's your point?" Katara asked the cynical Azula.
Azula twirled the bat. "No one knew the guy." She tapped her shoes with the bat then cleared home plate. "I could sit on the hard gym bleachers next to you and Karo and insincerely listen to people who never knew the kid eulogize or I could come out here and think. I needed to think." Azula went to the bag of bats and picked a third bat. She deftly twirled it in the air and then swung it.
"What about?" Katara walked to the bag of bats and picked one. "I didn't know anything about baseball until I met you." She twirled the bat she picked. "Anyway, the principal has you on the one week detention list."
"No one mentioned Hiei lived above the neighborhood bank?" Azula stepped up to the plate. "The bank owns the building. The bank takes up the first two floors and the upper two have flats. The manager lives in the largest flat on the fourth story and the other four are rented. Bank employees live in the other flats – cheap rent is a perk. The bank has extra security given that its employees live at the bank."
Azula nodded at Karo and Karo took his position.
Crack!
Another fly to right field.
"What are you saying slugger?" Katara slyly said.
"I flied out." Azula scratched her cheek. "I know that bank because I do my banking there and do the weekend deposits for Iroh. Karo's family banks there. They hired an accountant in the summer to replace Mr. Sansui after he retired. I know this because I had a meeting with Mr. Inoie to discuss my Fire Nation pension fund at the end of September."
Azula made a slight adjustment to her stance.
"He didn't do anything?" Katara tapped the bat impatiently. "Did he?"
"No." Azula looked out to the center outfield and pointed to the football bleachers. "Hiei witnessed something at the bank." Azula swung her bat and then set up for another hit. "He was murdered for it."
Crack!
Azula smiled with satisfaction as she watched the ball make a loud bang as it hit the bleachers. "How do you know this?" Katara swung the bat.
She didn't know much about baseball but Azula often took the chance to keep her arms strong through batting practice and Karo was a library of all sort of practical statistic about the game. She couldn't resist the chance to try and hit the ball.
"I don't but the theory best fits the facts given the circumstances." Azula adjusted her hands. "Our trams make noise and don't move all that fast. They hit a top speed of about forty clicks – an ostrich horse at full gallop. Most of the time they don't move that fast. We have plenty of time to get out of the way even at night because they make lots of noise and have bells and whistles and lights."
Karo adjusted his mask. Katara noticed Karo had a metal box with a dial behind him and had turned around to adjust it but he hid this from Azula with his glove.
Azula swung and missed.
"In any event, the tram driver saw nothing. He should have seen a person wandering in front of the tram. He didn't." Azula pointed the bat at Katara. "The driver hit the brakes and stopped within three seconds after he ran over something. I think Hiei was placed on the track to make it look like the tram ran him over."
"I wanted a sinker on the outside left side of the strike zone but that went low and too far left – Ball 1." Karo held up his glove and made an adjustment on the control. "The problem for me comes from your habit of tipping those back into me."
Katara noticed a few things. Azula watched for the pitch but glanced at Karo. Karo had signaled the pitch and how he held his glove told her where to hit.
"I can usually get you to step too far over the plate with a curve ball to the left and down but you've figured that out and shag those down third base." Karo mused as he waited. "No infielder wants to chase a hopping grounder down the third baseline if he has to throw to first to get the out."
"Of course my theory happens to be just that." Azula eyed the pitching machine. Karo shifted slightly to the left.
Crack!
"Damn! Stupid hopping grounder went into the dugout!" Azula said 'damn' for two reasons: her hit showed weakness in countering Karo and Bonnie walked down the first baseline towards her. "Base and ball are two four letter words put together. Lets keep quiet about Hiei." Azula glowered at Bonnie.
Bonnie crossed her arms, stood at a safe distance and watched Azula swing the bat.
Katara tried to match the elements of a good swing as she stood in the on deck cicle and swung the bat.
"How does this game work?" Bonnie asked half interestedly.
"The pitching machine sends a ball over the plate and I try to hit it." Azula tapped her shoes and glanced at Karo. Azula was a fairly thin girl but something gave her arms speed and power. Bonnie heard a loud crack. Azula watched the ball make a long low arc just inside the third base line and then do a bounce and hop into the outfield.
"I came to tell you the principal wants to speak to you about detention." Bonnie said with a full dose of Schattenfreude – joy at Azula and Karo's impending detention. "You didn't show up for the memorial to Hiei Inoie...and attendance was mandatory."
"Take over Katara." Azula held the bat.
"I'll start you with a simple fast ball over the middle of the plate." Karo explained as he held his glove and adjusted the control. "Stand in the square next to home plate – on the right or left depending on how you bat. The ball has to cross the plate in the strike zone – the area over the plate between your knees and your torso when you take up position. Think of it as that space above the home plate and your swing has to pass through it and so does the ball. If you swing and miss when the ball passes this space, you get a strike, and if you don't try to make a hit you get a strike. If the ball passes outside the space, you get a ball and if that happens four times, you get a walk which means you can go to first base." Karo pointed down the first base line.
"How can you goof off during Hiei's memorial – the poor boy died so horribly." Bonnie shook her finger at Azula. "You have a week of detention and the principal wants to see you now."
"Don't lean in!" Azula shouted back to Katara. "Stay in the batters box and watch Karo's glove. He knows what the next pitch will be. At the last moment he'll adjust his position in anticipation of where he expects the pitch!"
"I'm not goofing off Bonnie!" Azula gritted her teeth. "You didn't even know Hiei yet you gave a eulogy." Azula watched Katara swing and miss. Karo made a clean catch. "I hope he has found peace. We have not. I want to know why a tram ran over him at four in the morning. I came out here to think about that. I find batting practice helps me think."
"You are so heartless!" Bonnie clenched her fists. "A boy dies and you can't be bothered to attend an assembly in his memory!? What do you care about!?"
"All true Suihanese are commanded to seek justice." Azula knew Bonnie was Suihanese. "I seek justice."
'A just deal shall demand equality. Do not forget justice and fairness to all.' The principal faced Lady Zhao who demanded the reprieve from the detention from her son and her adopted daughter. The Suihanese Orthodox Church forbid inequality (or permitted arrogance depending on your background). 'God made all equal before Him.' Women had long had high position in Suihanese society as the Church forbid any discrimination against any member based on 'God given' traits.
Lady Zhao commanded respect. She was tall with graying hair and had survived so long as a refugee from her husband and been a hero during the War. The Suihanese had a long tradition of strong women of Faith.
"The did not attend the memorial." The principal rustled papers. "I admit they are both exemplary students but you must admit they should have shown more respect."
"I will deal with that." Lady Zhao towered over the balding head of the principal at his desk. "I agree they should have attended the assembly but that helps them come to grips with sad news. We are Suihanese and in our tradition, we grieve 'differently'. We do the thing the departed loved most. We often place the urn of the ashes of our departed next to the radio to hear the football playoffs or we go to the pub and play darts." Lady Zhao tapped the desk. "You have an excuse to let them off."
The principal knew a little about the Suihanese. He knew Lady Zhao told the truth. Suihanese culture differed in many ways from The Realm: they believed in one God. That God was egalitarian. The Suihanese used cremation and the urn sat in the house for a year until the deceased was interred at his church in the majority of cases. The Suihanese did not apply this rule all the time. Some loved their pub and were interred under there. Others paid to be interred in their garden or a place the considered sacred.
"I see." The principal sighed. "Azula had brought much prestige to our school through her work. Karo is a decent a kind student and everyone likes him."
"Thank you." Lady Zhao said kindly. "I will speak to them."
Lady Zhao marched out and returned with Karo and Azula under her arms.
"I will let you lecture them first." Lady Zhao smiled.
Lady Zhao had agreed to ground Karo and Azula for a week and the second day cooped up in the house with both of them made Lady Zhao wonder why she had to be punished. Azula worked on the weekends at the teashop so this meant the late afternoon and evening of the weekends were the times to watch her.
Karo spent his extra time reading and listening to the radio.
Lady Zhao knew Azula had no attention span and easily grew bored. Lady Zhao had prepared her voice for the shouting and lecturing needed to keep Azula from building a weapon of mass destruction.
Azula began Saturday by scaring the life out of Karo with something she had built called a 'paint ball gun'. Karo made the mistake of reading the Saturday newspaper and not keeping his peripheral vision on the moving shadow coming up from behind over his left shoulder.
Whap!
"What the hell!" Karo screamed as Azula shot a paint ball full of yellow tempera paint exploded over the sports page. "Is that my air rifle!?"
Lady Zhao sat at the door to the kitchen and crossed her arms.
"I heard my son scream." Lady Zhao gave Azula a penetrating scowl. "Why is the living room covered with yellow powder?"
"More to the point; why am I covered in yellow powder?" Karo looked at Azula with indignation. "Why do you have my daisy air rifle? What did you do to it to make it shoot paint pellets?"
"You got off work an hour and a half ago." Lady Zhao explained in a sinister voice and tapped her finger on her arm. "Give me the gun and go to your room."
Azula handed the gun over to Lady Zhao.
"Go upstairs and sit in Karo's bedroom until I call you for dinner." Lady Zhao held the gun over her shoulder. "Go..."
"And Karo will get cleaned up and help me prepare dinner and he'll avoid getting yellow paint on the floor." Lady Zhao tapped her foot. "I can ask the school to give you both extra homework if you're bored."
I thought I heard a noise." Lady Zhao wafted the steam from a pot of wonton soup.
Karo looked around. "I heard nothing."
"I hear a thin teenage girl with more brains than common sense climbing down the side of the house." Lady Zhao walked to the front door. "I can hear the trellis giving way."
Snap!
"Ow!" Azula yelped.
"Turn off the oven when the biscuits are done." Lady Zhao advised Karo. "I have to yell at your cousin."
Karo heard the front door open.
"Is dinner ready yet?" Azula asked Karo as she came in the back door.
"Ahh!" Karo clutched his chest. "How did you!?"
"I filled your hockey bag with books, tied it to the trellis and then came down the stairs." Azula took the lid off the pot on the stove.
"You have called down the thunder young miss." Lady Zhao wagged her finger at Azula. "Now you'll be lucky to see the real world in...get upstairs."
"What about dinner?" Azula hung her head.
"Karo will bring it to you!" Lady Zhao pointed upstairs. "As soon as he picks up his hockey bag off the front lawn!"
Azula stomped upstairs.
Karo left the kitchen and dragged the hockey bag into the house.
"What on earth did she use to fill this thing?" Karo mumbled as he gave up lifting the thing and decided to empty it. Azula had packed it with his favorite science fiction anthologies and used textbooks all padded by his large winter blanket.
"I don't understand that girl sometimes." Lady Zhao shook her head as she entered the living room.
"I will admit our current theories don't come close to explaining her." Karo sat on the couch and stacked his books on the coffee table. "She had to spend childhood with a father who had nothing to do with her and a mother who has never really understood her. She found the best way to get the attention of her parents was by acting out and she learned that lesson very well."
Azula walked to her job at the tea shop. She hated fall only slightly less than winter. During the night, cold rain had pelted the city and she had heard the wind driving rain into the window. The rain had stopped before morning but the morning remained damp and cold.
"Isn't the sinkhole one of those things that make Ba Sing, Se Ba Sing Se?" Azula stared at disbelief at the hole in the street in front of the bank. "Given all the badger moles and earth benders tunneling under this place; it takes the kind of engineering seen in hydroelectric plants to add a wing to a hospital."
Katara stood at the police tape cordoning off the hole.
"This isn't a sinkhole." Katara told Azula. "Someone dug this tunnel."
"Ah..." Azula nodded.
The City of Ba Sing Se lay on a drained swamp and had weak soil under so much of it; the city had sunk below sea level in some places. A system of canals and pumps kept the city dry enough but sinkholes formed in areas where voids formed below the buildings of the city. The First Responders often had to dig a pour soul or two out of a house that had lost the ground out from beneath it. The odd tree also vanished below grounds and locomotives had plunged into holes beneath the railway that had suddenly appeared in a matter of a few minutes.
Azula could see the light gray bleached clay soil tumbling into the pit. The pit had filled to almost street level with rainwater and turned a grayish white as the sludgy soil washed into it.
"How nice...lets open up the tea shop because I'm getting cold." Azula told Katara.
"We can't open the tea shop," Katara told Azula, "they won't let us return until they know if the ground beneath our feet will hold up."
Azula shook her head. Murky and cold, no one could see to the bottom of that hole but the hole formed a nearly perfect square along the street parallel to the bank. Even at that, this kind of thing was not uncommon in Ba Sing Se – manholes collapsed and during the War, the army dug a network of tunnels that crossed the city to allow soldiers to move in secret.
Azula noticed planks of plywood floating in the murky water. This ruled out the army or civil engineers: they had learned to line their tunnels with something strong and waterproof like brick and concrete to support the weight of the wet soil and water around them. The trams used old army tunnels when the track ran under rivers and they were round, concrete lined and had thick walls and even at that, water made it in and had to be pumped out.
"The hole ends at the line of pilings under the bank." Karo pointed out to the bank. The sidewalk had collapsed into the hole but the bank foundations had not been disturbed.
Azula knew he referred to the wall of logs driven into the ground under the concrete foundation of the bank. The logs likely dated back hundreds of years, long before the War and before they had built the bank and never rotted: the wet clay soil acted to preserve them. The builders of those days didn't have the money to drive twenty meter long rods of steel in the ground given the lack of factories to church out steel bars in those lengths in the quantity needed. The log was cheap, strong and strong enough for stone or brick buildings of ten stories and they sank evenly with the building. When a new building went in, the old one became part of the concrete to build the new one. Karo's townhouse had four older buildings beneath it. Not only did this keep the city from actually sinking too far; the technique made for strong foundations.
"When was the bank built?" Azula looked up at the fluted columns that formed the facade over the front entrance and night time deposit slot. The classic marble columns betrays nothing about the age of the building: banks looked this way out of a tradition.
"The roof hasn't gone green." Karo commented on the copper sheeting popular in the roofs of many buildings. "I know they had a bank here when I moved into this neighborhood." Karo craned his neck but couldn't make out the date on the brass plaque hanging next tto the front window where the bank guard stood on duty.
"So during the War sometime?" Azula looked around the neighborhood. Ba Sing Se had been conquered and yet had escaped heavy damage throughout the War and so the blocks of flats, Iroh's tea shop and the rows upon rows of townhouses looked much like they always had. Copper roofs gave Ba Sing Se's roof line a unique look: new roofs gleamed copper red, while the old roofs had turned a pleasing green. Such a look even extended to newer buildings roofed in steel or asphalt: they painted their roofs green top blend in.
"Danm it all...the comic book store is closed too." Azula cussed. "This leaves us with a Sunday and nothing to do until the matinee opens at the Nickelodeon."
"I had plans to attend a church service." Karo remarked.
"Nothing to do on a Sunday." Azula made a fist. "You can sing to your invisible imaginary friends. One of the reasons we avoided the theater came down to the lack of violence appropriate movies and the surplus of romantic comedies at this time of year."
"I could go for a cute romantic comedy." Katara said in a way that assured Karo they would end up spending the afternoon seeing a romantic comedy.
"I want to see a giant radioactive lizard stomp all over a large city." Azula rang the bell. "A large fire belching monster which can roast soldiers and melt tanks puts the art in cinema."
"Nope no fire belching lizard but we have a movie about a romantic couple separated by the war." Katara held up the paper.
"We're off to church!" Azula grabbed Karo. "We have an invisible imaginary friend and I have a sudden urge to see if I can belch 'A Mighty Fortress is Our God'."
"You find the concept of a personal deity outrageous." Karo felt his collar tighten as Azula began herding him in the direction of the church. "Your lectures in Sunday school on skepticisim made some of the parents of the six year old kids in that class a bit irate." Karo shook his head. "The number of comments in the collection plates set some kind of church record. The book keeper noticed."
"I merely suggested another approach to God involving not bothering with the idea." Azula defended herself as she herded the reluctant Karo down the street. "Now I see the utility of the idea because we get out of going to a girlie movie where no one gets shot or run over by a tank."
"We've gone to church." Karo admonished Azula. "Mom kept having to check if you were awake and not playing with a yo yo."
Azula held up a green metal box the size of a deck of cards.
"I can try and sink the little golf balls in the nine holes."
"When you went to church with mom and me, did something change for you?" Karo slogged though the much in the bottom of at tunnel as Azula led the way using the light of a flame from the palm of her hand.
"I don't recall anything." Azula took a look around the interior of the old army tunnel. Steam and water pipes serving the houses above ran across the ceilings: in this part of the city, these tunnels were only a meter or two below ground so the city engineers ran their pipes for services through them to save carving up the streets above.
A rat looked up at her with his beady eyes.
"I wondered if you decided to wander in these old army tunnel because of some epiphany – is all." Karo shivered in the damp cold darkness. "Maybe this came to you in a vision?"
"I hate mysteries." Azula slowly walked ahead.
The rat scurried off to join the others hiding in the dark.
"I feel damp and cold." Karo answered back. "We employ people to solve mysteries. We have the police and the private detectives and forensics guys."
"It's a tunnel so damp and cold is all you get." Azula slopped along the brick lined tunnel. "At least it's a dry damp."
"At this point, the Colonial Marines motion detectors all go off at once as the walls begin moving and they're ambushed by the progeny of the aliens." Karo complained bitterly. "We're off to be cocooned."
"If the rats get that level of social organization we may find ourselves used as food." Azula faced a T intersection and looked to the right and the left. "So far all the evidence suggests the most that will happen will be some kind of plague or rabies. Both treatable diseases although the shots for rabies cause great pain."
"I want to see how close to our neighborhood we can get before these tunnels flood out." Azula motioned to the left. "These army supply tunnels were built to last and lined with brick and waterproofed with concrete. We entered them through the manhole in the alley by the church. Your church lies on the crown of a small hill. So far the tunnel isn't filled with water but as we head toward the tea shop, if we find they were flooded out, we know someone has tunneled from one of them to try to get into the bank."
Azula wanted to explain the sinkhole and work backwards from that. The church stood on a hill that did not have natural or supernatural origins. In the ancient city, the hill had formed because that part of the modern city had once served the old city as a rubbish tip. The city grew up around it and then on top of it and by the time the army dig their tunnels; most people forgot that the upscale part of the city known as Northwoods lay on a defunct garbage dump.
"Do you know where these tunnels go?" Karo asked as a rat ran past his leg. "More to the point, how long after we're gone will we be declared missing?"
"That assumes we told someone we've left." Azula jumped up as another rat came splashed past her. "And these tunnels go somewhere."
"I'm leaving." Karo spoke with some assurance.
Azula stared down at a pile of mud, bricks, pieces of reinforced concrete, copper and lead pipe all in a heap. Water ran down the heap but no daylight made it through the dense mess.
"Since I can't earth bend, I'll join you." Azula said in her regulation calm. "We're only about three feet below street level." Azula made a few quick calculations in her head. "I don't think this tunnel collapsed: someone blew it open."
"We should leave." Karo felt the cold from the water penetrate his boots and soak his pants leg. "My common sense tells me we shouldn't be standing next to tons of mud in a slowly flooding tunnel."
"Very well..." Azula grabbed Karo's collar and began to walk back up the tunnel.
Ba Sing Se's location on drained swap and the lowlands of Lake Laogai and the fact much of it had sunk below sea level made any civil engineering task difficult. Repairing the sinkhole proved difficult: pumping the water out let more water in. Engineers had to find the source of all the water, stop or redirect the flow and then fix the sinkhole. Facile earth benders tried to close the sinkhole but the water merely grew larger after it washed away the fill. All they could do to save the situation was pump out enough water into the nearest canal to keep the intersection from flooding out.
The tea shop and every other business except the opened the next day on Monday but the lingering problem remained. Bank customers had to make a ten minute tram trip if they needed to access their account and the bank had no idea when they could reopen because the engineers couldn't tell them when they could enter the lobby.
The City of Ba Sing Se engineers had endured cold winters and this led them to a solution. If the water could not be stopped; they might attempt to keep it frozen.