A/N: I got the idea to write this while I watching an episode of Teen Titans on Boomerang. I'm not gonna tell you which episode it is. Instead, I'm gonna let you try and guess. The correct guesser wins a new car and house…okay, not really, but I'll give you a shout-out in the following chapter. :D
I warn you now, this story will be kind of dark.
Fun Fact: the title for this story came from the name of a track from X-Ray Dog, entitled – you guessed it – Shadow of Tyranny. Hey, it may not be super creative, but it works. :p
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The Messenger
There was a hushing calm in the night's embrace on the small island of Kyoshi. The amber-colored leaves rustled daintily in the calm breeze, some of them being released from the grip of the tree limbs and granted their wish to float along the current of the air. The moon graced the earth with its soft light, almost giving the sand on the beach and the water that surrounded the atoll a look of silver. The crickets sang their chirped songs to their mates, drifting the human inhabitants down the calm babbling brook of sleep. And yet, the soft sonata hadn't any effect on one newcomer.
Ty Lee, the island's newest Kyoshi Warrior, was having trouble finding rest. She tossed and turned sleeplessly in her cot, her body appearing to try and tire itself out and force rest upon her. This however yielded nothing for her efforts. After a while, she finally sat up, swinging herself around and resting her feet upon the dry wooden floor. Herdark chocolate hair, undone from its usual braid, sat uncoordinated on her shoulders.
As she stared at the floor beneath her, Ty Lee pondered on what could possibly be causing this bout of restlessness. She hadn't had any problems with the other warriors. After a month of being a part of their group, she'd quickly gained the trust of her "sisters" and they had become good friends with her, and vice versa. She was even on good terms with Suki, who grudgingly only gave the Fire National entry into the Kyoshi Warriors after hearing the positive report of the other warriors with whom she'd been imprisoned.
Since betraying Azula, when serving time in the Boiling Rock prison, she used to be plagued with nightmares, recapitulating fears of her former friend killing her or Mai, fears of never being accepted again in the Fire Nation. But those fears seemed to finally go away when she joined the Kyoshi Warriors. Amidst the members of her new family, she never felt more at peace with herself…
So why did she feel so out of sorts right now?
Realizing that reprieve wouldn't come where she was now, she stood up and walked out of her room, opening her door slowly and squeezing out of the gap before closing it back again, trying to keep the squeaking of the ungreased hinges as low as possible. She then started down the hall. For a while, the only sound she heard was the soft tapping of her docile feet about the planks until, about halfway to the end of the corridor, she heard the creak of another wooden door. Ty Lee turned to see Natsumi enter the hallway. She was dressed in an olive-green yukata, just like Ty Lee's. The Kyoshi Warriors all wore garments of the same styling: long, flowing, olive-colored robes with broad, squared sleeves and lime-green ties. The usually radiant color of her emerald eyes was hidden by her droopy eyelids. Her movement somewhat shuffled, suggesting she'd just woken up.
"What're you doin' up?" Her voice was slurred like Sokka fresh on cactus juice.
"I'm sorry," Ty Lee whispered. "I didn't mean to wake you. I was just-"
"-Sneaking out of the dorms." Ty Lee and Natsumi both yelped and snapped their heads towards the voice, seeing Suki appear behind the young fink. The leader of the Kyoshi Warriors gazed accusingly at the newcomer. She was wearing a nightgown like the rest of the now-slumbering warriors. Her hair seemed as made up and proper as during the day. This was something the acrobat had always noticed about the elite warrior ever since their fight on the gondola, during Suki's prison escape. It was also something she was secretly envious of.
Ty Lee began to break into a cold sweat, which she found weird. "No, I-I well, I sorta was, but I wasn't…" Ty Lee, at a loss for words and not wanting to keep stuttering like an idiot any longer, heaved a defeated sigh from her lungs and dipped her head in surrender. Why was she so uneasy? She wasn't doing anything wrong.
"Natsumi, go back to bed," Suki ordered, her voice stiff and glare firm. She complied with the command with a nod and closed her door. The auburn-haired warrior turned back to Ty Lee.
"Well," Suki crossed her arms and her brows dipped subtly. "Are you going to tell me what you're doing out of your room in the middle of the night?"
"I couldn't sleep," Ty confessed softly, keeping her eyes trained on her leader. "I wanted to go to the beach and try to relax."
Suki's glare fell away immediately and was replaced with a small smirk. "That's it?"
Ty Lee nodded.
Suki let off a small laugh. "Well goodness, Ty, you don't have to sneak out to just hit the beach for a little bit." There was a brief pause before Suki's smile fell again. "Have you always had issues sleeping since you got here?"
"Not really, no…"
"Is there something on your mind? Do you need to talk?"
Ty Lee shook her head and finally lit a reassuring smile to her friend. "No, I don't think so. I just need to hit the beach for a little while. I used to do the same thing back when I was in the circus."
"The circus? I thought you told us that the circus you used to go to was near Omashu. There aren't any bodies of water near Omashu."
"I was part of a traveling circus. We moved a lot through the Earth Kingdom, and we were always entertaining folks in the Fire Nation colonies," the former performer explained.
"Oh… Well, why do you need to hit the beach?"
"Because I need sleep, silly," Ty Lee reminded drowsily.
Suki's brows perked. "The beach helps you sleep?"
"Well, it's less about the beach and more about listening to the soothing sounds of nature. Back in Omashu, there was a wooded area nearby. I would go there for meditation. It would always help to calm my nerves before a performance. I'm hoping it'll help me here, too."
Suki's brows relaxed and she flashed a smile again. "Hmm…well, go ahead, then. Just make sure you're refreshed for morning drills. You know my policy about tardiness and weak performance."
"A group is only as strong as their weakest unit," Ty Lee recited, recalling the saying from her first days of training.
"That and whoever is late has to help the fishermen scale and gut the fish for the entire day."
Ty Lee shuddered at this. She had to do that very duty the first day of training. Apparently, it's tradition for the established Kyoshi's to pick on the newcomers, as she found out when nobody woke her up at morning call. What's worse is that she ended up helping to gut, not the usual fish, but squid. She smelled like a one-month dead possum-squirrel for two days straight.
"Y-yeah," she answered with a nervous chuckle. Ty Lee started towards the dorm entrance when Suki called for her again.
"Hey, one more thing, Ty."
The acrobat looked back to Suki, who was in her room at the end of the hall, her head sticking out of the near-closed door. "Yes?"
The auburn haired girl smirked. "Next time you want to sneak out of the dorms, try the window. It's not as noisy as the door."
The crashing of the surf upon the beach did just what Ty Lee had hoped it would. She felt calm and relaxed. Her chocolate eyes started to droop and she smiled as a wave of exhaustion hit her. She lifted herself to her feet and started into the woods, back towards the dorms.
As she walked deeper into the throngs of trees, the light growing more and more scarce, she suddenly found herself thinking about the Boiling Rock. She shuddered vociferously at remembering the hell-hole that the prison so rightfully was known as. She was blessed enough to have avoided being killed by the guards, as Mai grimly forecasted to be her fate at the hands of the guards for taking down Azula, but she wasn't immune to torture. Many a time, she was beaten, starved and whipped, both with ripping rope and the searing fire. A few times, Azula herself was the facilitator of these deeds, helping to fuel Ty Lee's fears that her death would come at princess's hand.
Perhaps the worst form of torture that she endured was witnessing the murder of the Boiling Rock's female inmates. These inmates were Earth Kingdom fugitives shipped in from the mainland strictly for that purpose. For Ty Lee, it wasn't the fact that she was forced to watch the demise of the girls, who were all around her age, that made her cringe and squirm wildly in the chair to which she was confined, or gave her nightmares for nights on end. What made Ty Lee sick to her stomach were the disgusting and inhumane ways that the prisoners were executed. The methods ranged widely, but had two main common denominators: they were slow, and they were bloody. In each witnessed execution, her ears were racked with the girls' screams as the guards tore away flesh, smashed to dust bone, and spilled as much blood as their savage hands could rip out. Ty Lee's own screams and sobs would always try to block the cries of the victims and her eyes would flush with tears, trying to wipe away the wretched scenes from her sight, from her mind, but still they sights and sounds of death flooded her senses. With each slaughtered youth, a small part of her died with them.
The most damning reality of that part of her life was the fact that Azula specifically gave the guards the order to do this, and that she was the only one who was subjected to that form of torment. Mai was kept immune because of her relations with the warden, being his niece.
Those images, forever engraved in her mind, haunted her even to this very day. Tearing herself loose of those wretched thoughts, Ty Lee reminded herself that this was the very reason that she'd left the Fire Nation, why she'd pushed so valiantly to be allowed to join the Kyoshi Warriors. After being harmed by her own, after watching the horror that "patriots" in her country subjected to her fellow inmates, her fellow peers, to she herself, she could no longer call the Fire Nation home.
Being brought back to the present, she saw that she'd stopped moving and that she was lower to the ground than before…in fact, she was on the ground, on her hands and knees. Tears were streaking even still down her face and her throat was swollen and sore. She'd been crying.
I guess I'm not as over it as I thought…
She picked herself up and started towards the dorms once more when she heard something in the trees. Ty looked up to the tops of the lumbering trees, but didn't see anything that constituted a disturbance. It must be a squirrel-possum or something…
Moving on once more to her home, the woods were quiet again. Ty Lee could hear nothing moving anymore. The crickets no longer sang and the owls were silent. Nothing scurried along the floor or in the trees. It was almost as if the forest was completely dead. The only thing that entered her ears was the crunch of dried, withered leaves that lined the forest floor crunching under the force of her bare feet.
After nearly eighty lonely paces, she finally heard another sound besides her strides. Not sure of what was there or what was going on, Ty Lee's heart began to pound, her senses growing sharper than usual. Ty Lee's right ear perked minutely as a high-pitched whistle vibrated upon her eardrums. She stopped just in time to avoid an arrow whipped past her and into a tree on her opposite side. One more step forward, and that very arrow would be in her arm.
She turned towards the origins of the projectile. Rising from his hiding place in the bushes was a figure in a hooded drape. She was reminded of the drape that Zuko wore the day he ran away to join the Avatar. She could tell that the figure was a man because of his broad shoulders. He was careful to keep his face concealed as he stood with his back to the moon. Of course, his face was hard to see in the first place because of the almost nonexistent lighting of the forest. In his hand was a bow. Not seeing any arrows in his free hand, Ty Lee suspected that they were in a pouch, strapped to his hip beneath the cloak.
The two stared at each other for the longest. At last, the figure spoke. "Are you Ty Lee?"
The girl in question stared at the guy with a mixture of bafflement and distress. This guy attacks me, and he wants to know my name? "Who wants to know?" she asked, trying to mask the fear in her voice with confidence. However, instead of confident, her voice was raspy.
Beneath his hood, the man smirked. "A messenger."
Ty Lee dropped into stance as he reached into his veil, snatching out a small cylinder object. She could see a small string protruding from it; Ty Lee had a feeling that it was some sort of explosive. With a click of his fingers, the fuse was ignited, sparkling with a loud, hissing fizz. As the 'messenger' threw the explosive towards the girl with a breezy flick of the wrist, Ty Lee jumped to get out of the blast radius, but the bomb exploded just as she went airborne. The discharge sent her flying into the trees. Her head was spinning and her body felt like she'd been hit with the wind of a maelstrom. Estimating where the girl would land, the man threw another cylinder. As it landed under Ty Lee, there was a small spark, and then a burst of wind as the air around her was clouded in white particles. Slamming hard on the ground, her lungs burned as she coughed violently on the strange substance, her eyes red and scratchy. Despite this, warrior tried to stand once more on her feet, but her body was sore from the brief attack.
"I don't know…who you are," Ty Lee warned with her fists shakily raised and legs quivering wearily, "but you're not getting off that easy."
"Of course, I am…" the attacker sneered, "…In three…two…one."
Right on cue, Ty Lee's legs gave out and she fell to her knees. Her arms shook even harder now. Her muscles felt as if a ton of bricks was suddenly placed on her back. Every part of her now was sore and tired; she felt ready to collapse. She couldn't even raise her head to see her assailant.
"What…whad di-ii-i…gyouuu…"
What remained of the girl's strength was now gone as she fell limp onto her side. Her breathing was slowed to a sleepy hiss as her chest rose and fell faintly. Darkness claimed her completely and she slipped into a void of nothingness.
The cloaked figure smirked at the unconscious Ty Lee and turned, starting in a slow stride towards the beach.
"Message received."