School has been killing me lately, but I'm glad I got this done. Hella fun to write this chapter. :) It annoys me that I can never pick out all the mistakes on the first reread though.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except the tarnished 35.

Hope you enjoy this chapter!

"Ugh," I groaned. Or tried to. My throat was so hoarse that it must have come out like the squawk of a dying arctic hen. But whoever was with me—with me where?—didn't seem to find it a problem.

I've woken up in mysterious places before—an unlit warehouse when I was still a child, a platypus bear cage after a case gone wrong—and I knew enough to stay still and just observe, which wasn't hard because my head throbbed like the hand of a greenhorn who knocked off his first victim.

Not that opening my eyes was any better. I had half a thought to shoot my brains out when my retinas were pierced by the merciless sunlight flooding through the windows.

Windows.

That ruled out ditch, dump, or river bottom.

Suddenly I felt my body shift upwards, followed by a quick drop and an ungraceful bump into the side of the chair in front of me. Blinking out the sting, I realized that I was in a car. While the interior color would remind you of a hearse, the driver was not solemn at all, humming a makeshift tune. He turned around.

"Oh good, you're awake Detective Mai! My nephew didn't have his wits entirely together when he told me how to get to your building, and my sense of direction has worsened with age. I was afraid we'd end up somewhere in the middle of Omashu before you got up."

My nerves loosened for a moment before I remember the contents of last night: tea, Jun, bourbon, Uncle, empty glasses, Lee, and then falling unconscious. But reminding myself seemed to feed fire to the monstrous hangover that moved into my head. Each bump in the road sent my brain careening around in my skull. I could feel several knives pressing hard against my stomach.

"So I know I have to get onto Kuei Lane, but then it splits off somewhere…"

"Left-most," I finally got out. I closed my eyes and tried to salvage whatever brain matter was left unscorched.

When the car coasted to a stop in front of the building, I said my thank you and insisted that I would get to my apartment myself, but he more ardently insisted that I should lean on him as we walked into the lobby, and up the elevator, until the light flashed and it made a ding and I got out and gave another terse thank you and he disappeared down the shoot and I looked for my keys and unlocked the door and fell over onto the couch and fell asleep without even removing my coat.

The honking of cars on the road outside of the building found their way into my apartment, and I woke up feeling only slightly better than how I was in the car. I checked the clock.

3:27 PM

I hissed and tried to get up from the couch, my head and legs still unsteady from whatever remnants of the hangover still clung to me like a greedy broad. Quickly undressing, I moved into the bathroom to take a wash.

After that long, albeit tipsy talk with Lee the night before, I was respurred to continue the case. Left knob, right knob. I didn't do it out of pity; he was impossible to pity. That would be like feeling sorry for a wounded komodo rhino. Soap, scrub. But I admired him and his strength: not an optimist, but a realist, a realist with goals. Towel, blouse, skirt. He was going somewhere, and with a sack of gold locked in the bottom drawer, I was going to help him.

I quickly tied my hair into two tails. After adjusting my jacket and making sure all the knives were in their secure places, I exited out of the apartment.

x

"…and then I said to Jack, if he brought another bearded cat into the house, he'd be doing the dance under a noose."

Turning onto Shuei Road, I passed by a couple of wives gossiping in front of a flower shop. The neighborhood was a bit worse than mine: trash littered the street and the buildings surrounding it looked weary as they stared down at its inhabitants. Shady people leaned against a wall smoking and conversing with each other, and a group of orphans were playing tag, running around with their irksome giggles.

I walked further down the street, and it wasn't long before I found the dame's complex, made semi-famous by all the newspaper articles that shot snaps of it with AVATAR in the headlines. The only people around were two men leaning against the outside rail, one with a smoldering cig and the other with a rolled up newspaper. The latter one gave me a quick glance before returning to his mindless wander. I pushed through the squeaky gate and entered the building's lobby. An old hag sat rocking in her chair, her crabbiness amplified by her thick lenses.

"Could you tell me Katara's room number? They hired me to find their lost pet bison, but forgot to leave me a number," I asked, standing a polite distance away.

"That flying brute? Well good riddance. It sheds all over the place, and doesn't even have to manners to clean after itself…" She trailed off with incoherent muttering.

"Well could you give me—"

"I told you already, its 35!" she snapped at me, "All you whippor-snappers these days..."

I quickly left her to continue her conversation with herself and headed up the stairs. It smelled of damp leaf and sour milk. But the third floor wasn't much better, with its rat-chewed carpets and faded blue paint peeling off of the wood. I could hear scuttling as I walked towards the door with the tarnished 35 bolted to it. My fist rapped it twice.

There was no sign of life (other than what was crawling through the walls) until I heard some shuffling, and the door opened a crack, the lock's chain dangling quietly. A blue eye looked out at me suspiciously before its owner said, "If you're looking for the drug dealer, he's one door down."

Before he could close it, I shoved my foot through the small opening. "I'm not looking for drugs."

"Well the bootlegger got jailed last week so you're out of luck." He pushed on the door more firmly but I gripped the side with my hand now.

"Sokka, you better not be buying another vacuum cleaner," a groggy female voice called out from the room.

When he turned around to look at the speaker, I pulled out my business card and fed it through the opening. "Private Investigator Mai. Your sister called me earlier about how your pet bison went missing."

Sokka took the card and scrutinized it with a funny clashing of eyebrows. "Huh, I remember seeing Appa just this morning." He pulled out the chain and opened the door wide, giving me room to stride in. "Something musta happened when I went out shopping." I shut the door behind me and relocked it as the second inhabitant wearing loose garb walked into the small living room through another door.

"Who's 'at?" She asked, rubbing her eyes.

Sokka looked from me to her. "Wait, who the hell are you!" he shouted, pointing an accusing finger at me. He would be almost comical if I didn't have a job to do.

"I told you already, I'm a detective. I have a couple of questions for the both of you."

Before he could spout another question at me, a furry white mini-buffalo padded up to me and licked my leg. Appa I assumed. For a graceful creature that could fly, it looked rather shaggy. It probably left some itchy fur on me.

"Not another one," Katara sighed wearily as she poured herself some milk from behind the counter. She didn't even look surprised at my conning the way in.

"You should go now," her brother told me threateningly. Comical, really. "We've already told everything we know to the police, to the newspapers, and to the damn Phoenix thugs."

"Calm down Sokka." She walked towards the couch with a mug in hand and bade me to sit on it, which I obliged to. "Let's just get this over with." Sokka sat in a chair diagonal across from us and didn't take his eyes off of me. "So, yes I found the Avatar after he was shot and nursed him back to health here. No, I did not know what happened to him at the time. No, I did not know him before I found him in an alley coming back from work. No, he did not say anything to me because by the time he was feeling somewhat better, he ran out from here. No, I do not know where he ran off to." She finished with a sad, far-off look in her eye as she sipped her drink.

"That's not what I came to ask."

Her brother took the reins now. "Well that's all we know, and now that you know everything that you could possibly learn from us, you can kindly get out. You don't know how much pain this stupid spotlight has put us through. Phoenix has been hovering over us ever since we let that kid in. They were the ones who killed our mother," he seethed, standing up from his chair now. His eyes looked vicious. "She didn't even do anything! She was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught in the crossfire over a stupid territory dispute! And while our father's been drafted into the army, my sister has to work as a host and I have to work at a construction firm in order to keep our home!"

"Sokka!" Katara shot a look at her brother, who was breathing heavy after his tirade. She looked at me as if to apologize, but her face was just as long as her sibling.

"I may not have personally experienced loss, but I have a friend—" well I knew about him enough by now "—who also lost his mother. She was killed by Ozai."

This seemed to calm the dark-skinned man. He inhaled more evenly now. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"His father and sister left him soon after that. He has his uncle, but you two are lucky to have each other," I said, adding the last smear of honey. Not that I didn't agree with that statement, but a little sympathy wouldn't hurt.

"Yah, I wouldn't know what I'd do without Sokka," she said with a small smile. Her brother sat back down. "You know, Aang really is a good kid. After he witnessed Ozai kill the guy, he didn't beg for his life. He ran. Which oddly enough is the crazier thing to do. And ended up getting shot in so many places, I didn't know how I could save him. I mean, I learned first aid to help Sokka with any injuries he had from work, but Aang was on a completely different level." She gripped the mug tightly, her thin fingers spread over the ceramic. "And when that body turned up in the river a week or two later, he left, not wanting to get us involved. Though we already pieced together what had happened."

Sokka continued, "Later on we found out through the newspapers that he was going to testify against Ozai for shooting that person. You know, it was the reporters who started call him the Avatar, and it really stuck on, including to us. It really seemed like he descended from the heavens. Justice was finally going to be brought down upon that damn crook. A couple of weeks past, and nothing happened as the court date got closer. Ba Sing Se actually had hope that the biggest criminal in town would be brought to his knees."

Katara bitterly interrupted. "But then everything changed when Phoenix attacked. They put a bounty on his head as big as the city itself and ran him out of town. Some thug named Zhao ended up taking the fall. And Ozai was probably left laughing at the whole thing in his office somewhere."

With their feelings out hanging in the air like a cadaver's last breath, I waited before asking my next question. Appa came over to the couch and snuggled against Katara's legs. "Why did they wait so long before making a move? They gave them so much time to prepare their case against Ozai."

Sokka shrugged. "Maybe so they could crush our spirits when they were at their highest. Seems like a sick thing they would do."

Time to drop it. "That friend of mine, he hired me to look for the Avatar. He told me that he saw him in town a couple of days ago. Has he tried to contact you guys in any way?"

They shook their heads calmly enough. "You're tooting the wrong ringer if you're looking for that information. Besides, why would he? He knows he'd get bumped off right off of the bat," Sokka stated logically.

"But you sure he's still alive then?"

"He's good at avoiding people with guns," Katara answered. She was staring straight at me now, a defiant curl in her mouth.

They were lying through their teeth.

Not surprising though.

I slowly got up from the couch, taking my time. "Well thank you for your help. My client probably got his information wrong anyway. There's no way the kid would come back here, even if the gang's been quiet for some time. There's nothing for him to even come back to." I shrugged.

"He has a lot of friends here," she replied.

"Well none that wouldn't give him to Phoenix for the reward money," I clarified, standing at the edge of the carpet now.

"Aang has us," Katara bit back, her voice low.

"I don't doubt you two. Though I think your efforts might have been wasted on him. Now that he's gone, it doesn't make a difference for the town if you had saved him or not."

"Hey, my sister did the right thing!" Sokka jumped in.

"Just because the rest of this town is so deep in the mud that they won't bother helping one dying person, doesn't mean I have to be like the rest of them. I saved Aang's life, and I don't regret it." Her voice was rising steadily.

"That's noble of you, but he only ended up causing you a lot of trouble. He didn't even have the courage to come back here and thank you."

"You know nothing about Aang." She slammed her mug onto the coffee table, letting waves of milk slop over, which Appa licked eagerly. Now Katara was standing as well, and even though I was taller than her, she cast off the shadow of a bear. "You come in here, with your business card and your dry voice—why can't you get a cough drop or something!" she spluttered, "—and after all we've done to accommodate you and your questions, you just insult our friend!"

"Katara, calm down," Sokka appealed, coming closer to his sister to put an arm on her shoulder, but she just brushed him off. Her voice quickly filled the room, brimming over like a boiling pot of stew.

"Aang, is not a kid, he is a man. And he for damn sure is a better person than you, your friend, and all the people living in this stinking town! He's funny, he's brave, he's warm, and he's good. And you know what? He's out somewhere in this city trying to foil Ozai and his plan right now!"

The room went completely silent after that. There weren't even birds chirping outside on the rooftops or the laughter of kids playing ball.

"Katara…"

She still gazed at me with anger, but her face slowly shifted as the realization of what she had just revealed dawned on her.

"You—you better not tell anyone!"

How many times have I rolled my eyes during this case? "I won't. I wasn't hired to hand the Avatar over to Phoenix."

They still eyed me suspiciously, unsure of what to do. "How do we know you're not lying?" Sokka demanded.

"You two were the ones who were lying about the Avatar."

"That's cause we're the good guys!"

"Well if I was a part of the gang, I would have shot you two already—"

"Damn rat!" a muffled voice hissed behind the door connecting to the hallway.

All of us turned to the source of the noise, before looking back at each other. Being the closest, I quietly padded towards the door, unlocked it, and pulled it open.

Nothing was there except a gray little animal that darted back into a crack in the wall.

"Was it just me, or did you guys hear—"

"Yes Sokka, we all heard that," Katara responded irritatedly. Even though I was facing the door to close it, I could tell her eyes were still trained on me. "Sorry detective, but for now you're going to have to stay with us."

"Yah, even if you have a gun, there's two of us and only one of you, so don't try anything." Sokka said loudly. Then he paused. "Do you have a gun?"

"No." I moved my arms to pat my gun-free coat pockets and the brother immediately stepped back towards the window across from us, grabbing at a potted cactus to defend himself with. For a pair willing to nurse a random person-turned-Swiss-cheese they found in a dark alley, they weren't very trusting.

"What kind of self-respecting detective doesn't have a gun?" Katara questioned, eyebrow cocked.

"I don't need one—"

"Hey," Sokka interrupted, "isn't that our crazy witch of a landlord?" His nose was to the window pane. "Who's she talking to?"

"It's Mrs Deely," Katara chided, walking over to him to look out as well. "Oh, those are the guys who started hanging around here a couple of days ago."

"Could they be from Phoenix?"

That caught their attention. Katara turned her head towards me. "That would explain why they looked at me funny whenever I passed through the gates…"

"Katara, you are a beautiful young lady and you got to remember to cover yourself up when you leave the building!" Sokka admonished, before getting a glare in return. "Hey, I think she's pointing up here…"

I joined them at the window without any opposition and looked out. One of the men was walking down the sidewalk while the other who had a cigarette followed the old woman into the building.

"You don't think she was eavesdropping on our conversation do you? I mean, the wood can't be that thin." She rubbed her wavy brown hair nervously.

"I don't know, sometimes I can't go to sleep 'cause Chong and his gal keep banging real loudly next door," Sokka refuted with a wave of his arms. "Oh yah, Chong! Since Miss P.I. over here doesn't even have a weapon…"

"Hey, we're not even sure yet that they're coming after us."

"Sis, you were shouting pretty loudly, and I'm sure the witch wouldn't seeing our brains splattered on the floor."

"Then we need to find a way to escape, not find a way into a gun fight," his sister argued.

"The second guy probably went around to the back of the building, and they should both have guns. The more firepower, the better," I stated. Only Sokka turned to stare at me pointedly now, but he had already put down the desert plant.

We filed out of the room and stood in front of door 37. "Hey, Chong, open up!" Sokka shouted, banging on wood. The door suddenly pulled open and his fist almost knocked on the chest of a taller, but scrawnier man.

"Heyo…Sokka," drifted a voice from the drug dealer. It didn't seem to belong to the whiskered man in front of me, more like it came from the jujus smoke wafting through the door. "I see you brought some quality skirts with you, very nice." He smiled, revealing yellow teeth.

Katara looked like she was going to torch the man with her eyes, but Sokka gave her a quick look before continuing, "Actually, I wanted to warn you that some thugs are coming after your stash. I heard them talking 'bout it near the building."

"What, somebody wants to steal my tea leaves?" he said slowly, like he was on a tour of the outer wall. I had half a mind to shove him down—

Something grey and fast whizzed straight past my hair and clipped the frame, causing splinters to fly out. My ears rang. I felt someone's hands on my back as Katara pushed us all into the room. Chong moved to the side, oddly adept for someone who was high. We stumbled in. A second shot clipped the door this time.

"Hand them over, and I won't pop your head open with metal!" a deep voice yelled from outside the hallway. It sounded like he was at the far end, but he was taking heavy footsteps towards us.

Chong kicked a floorboard in the middle of the room and plied it away. There was a shotgun underneath. He grabbed it and shoved in some slugs.

"Go get them, darling," came a lazy voice from a corner of the room. A woman with frizzy black hair was lounging with a reefer in her hand.

He propped it up. A boom exploded from the man in dirty briefs. A crack could be heard out in the hallway. The strides quickly moved backwards. "You'll never touch my leaf!" He pulled the trigger again.

"Let's go." The sound of a pistol fired. Then the shotgun. I pushed them towards the grimy window and we all tried fruitlessly to pull up the pane.

"You have to unlock it first," the woman said in a long drawl.

I popped the tab sideways and lifted it up, letting cold air wash over us. Feet first, I slid through the opening onto the metal fire escape. My shoes hit it with a clank. Something clipped the rail, and sparks flew out. I ducked. Through the spaces in between I saw the man with the newspaper. There was a hole in the middle of the folded papers.

"Ho hum," I heard from inside. But my attention shifted back out when another shot came past me. It hit the grating above. By now, he had abandoned his newspaper covering and was left with a hefty gun in his hand. I flipped out a knife instinctively, but the man was too far away.

"'scuuuse me." The woman slid lithely through the window and bent down as the thug shot again. It hit the brick wall. She had a bottle with a rag stuffed in it in her left hand and a lighter in the other. She flicked it, lit the rag, and sent off the bottle like a ship. It sailed through the air on its maiden voyage and crashed onto the asphalt. Glass and flames ripped out and shooter tumbled backwards. "Whoopsie."

I could hear Sokka and Katara make their way out now. I jumped to the second level and ran down the stairs, left, right, left right, left right, left right, until my feet hit the ground. The brute was getting up now, and he let off a round at me half on his knees. I felt a sting at my side but ignored it. Twisting my torso, I focused on him before releasing the first knife, firing it towards his dominant hand.

"Agni!" he cried in pain, dropping the gun along with some drips of blood.

My brain was pounding hard now. I aimed one more for his head this time, but he ducked to the side. The fire was quickly dissipating and his shape became more focused. He made a grab for the gun. Launching myself forward, I took out two more stilettos and shot them towards his knees. He fell forward, face contorted with anguish.

"Raaaaah!" A pony-tail whisked past me towards the crouching man with a piece of wood. Sokka smashed the finishing blow over his head and the gangster's face hit the road. The construction worker's shoulders drew up and down quickly as he stood over the unconscious body.

"You guys okay down there?" Chong's carefree voice floated towards us, his head sticking out of the window. The other guy probably had a bullet lodged into his skull. "Babe, I love what you've done with this place."

"Yah, I think the alley looks so much prettier now," she answered dreamily.

The harsh call of sirens cut through the air and we all stopped to listen to them coming closer.

"Thanks for taking that guy down," Katara said after walking up to me, glaring at the piece of meat lying a few feet away from her.

"Just returning the favor." She vaguely nodded, but crooked grins quietly emerged on both of our faces.

Her gaze shifted downwards. "Hey, you're bleeding." Her fingers grasped wet red fabric at the left side of my waist. Blood. Didn't feel serious. I blinked a couple of times, trying to push back at the adrenaline wave overwhelming my brain. I brushed her hand away.

"It's just a flesh wound." I numbed it in my head. Taking a couple of deep breaths, I said, "You're going to lose your pet bison, okay?"

"What?"

"I'm only here because you called me to look for your pet."

"But you came here to—" Katara stopped and nodded in understanding. She headed back up the fire escape to lose Appa.

"Man, this is one of the few times I'm happy that half of this apartment is on something," Sokka noted, looking around. Only a few heads came to their windows to look out, but they quickly retreated. It was the police who got to the scene first.

A black Ford rolled over to the entrance of the alleyway and stopped with a huff of its engine. The black door swung open, and a pair of dark boots exited first, followed by a perfectly tailored police uniform, complete with shiny brass buttons. She shut the door with authoritative patience and turned her brown-hair framed face towards us. After surveying the scene, her blue-green eyes focused on me. "Detective Mai. It's good to see you again."

Tune it next week for crazy inmates and doughnuts!

x

I'd love to hear any of your thoughts on this. :)