Skeleton Women
Chapter Three: Teenage Riot
Azula purred, "I'm waiting for a delivery. It is not you."
"Again. People who could pick me up," Mai said dispassionately, and Azula leaned to kiss her before a knock on the door interrupted them.
"As I said, I'm waiting for a delivery." And she strode over with the gait of a woman several years older than herself to open the door and stare down the poor delivery boy with those cold golden eyes that used to be wide and glittering with hope and excitement at the very idea of her future.
She took it and examined the boy for a second. He looked both afraid and expectant of reward, but Azula simply shut the door in his face before walking back to Mai. As Azula began to hastily open the package, tearing the wrapping to shreds with her long nails, Mai leaned back and was glad she was uninterested.
Mai could see the dusk become the night, and Azula was still flipping through whatever papers she had delivered to herself. She was torn between asking and staying out of it, but the door rattled and the scraping of a key rung out through the apartment.
Zuko opened the door and walked inside.
"Are those the stolen letters?" Zuko asked the second he shut the door and Azula glared at him. Mai watched raptly while she lay back on the sofa.
"Oh, just announce to the whole world that I have these." Azula rolled her eyes, but Zuko just shrugged.
No one was going to hear them in this building. And there was the fact that none of them alarmed anyone very much, save for stares at Zuko's face and stares at Azula's body.
"What do they say?" Zuko asked and Azula sighed.
"Most of them are useless correspondence, but I'm sure I can extract something from it," Azula said smoothly as she tried to organize the letters in a more efficient way.
"Zuko brought food," Mai said and he did hold up the bag, as if it were a tiger-monkey he killed with his bare hands.
Azula rolled her eyes and went back to trying to decipher the letters that required a good deal of effort to get.
What sounds like a war in the streets outside of her window woke Ty Lee.
She sat straight up, catching her breath. Ty Lee only just got used to how loud the city was in comparison to her sleepy little town. But this sounded like much more than the morning rush or boastful street peddlers, and so her pulse began to race as she leapt from her rough blankets and pressed her nose against the window.
It was nearing dusk, and it was almost time for Ty Lee to go to work, but she stopped thinking about work when she saw that people were brawling in front of the pawn shop across the street. No one was containing them, and it was getting out of hand, with five on either side, or so it seemed as she gawked.
"Third time this season," a young female voice remarked behind Ty Lee, and she jumped, smashing her nose into the glass and cursing. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you." Ty Lee turned to see On Ji, the innkeeper's daughter, looking up at her mother's tenant with a small smile on her lips.
"What's happening out there?" Ty Lee asked softly, rubbing her hand fiercely against the window to try to get a better view. On Ji frowned faintly as she saw the thick layer of dust that she knew she would be cleaning up later.
"Uh, just protesters." On Ji waved her hand and hopes to brush the topic away.
"They're fighting." Ty Lee just saw one of the men in dark green clothes get his nose punched in by another. It made her cringe.
"The guards always break them up," On Ji said, trying to reassure the beautiful young woman she has been watching from afar for so long.
Ty Lee looked away as the sound became louder and louder. "What are they protesting for?"
On Ji shrugged, and then frowned, and then reclaimed her small smile. "They're protesting Fire Lord Azulon."
"I never heard..." Ty Lee never heard anything outside of the paintings she saw in the only official building other than farms near her home. She knew Azulon was a grand and revered Fire Lord; she did not imagine that there would be protests like this.
"He's..." On Ji looked mildly uncomfortable, and so Ty Lee did not push her. "He's a good Fire Lord. They're mad about the war sometimes, other times about stuff around here that just doesn't get looked at. They're just angry people."
"That's such a sad thing to be," Ty Lee lamented softly before pulling all the way away from the window and walking to the other side of her room to get dressed. She thought she heard the crunch of bone from here, and she could not longer stomach the sight.
The idea that there was a riot on the other side of these back alley streets was very unnerving to Ty Lee, but she took a few deep breaths. Tonight was night three of waitressing, and she had to be at her best every single night. Not that she would miss watching the dancers and talking to the patrons in that smoky room for the world.
The idea that no one in the inn was disturbed, and the girl who can't be more than twelve had a laissez-faire attitude towards the violence was enough to make Ty Lee feel slightly concerned about what everyone told her about cities. Maybe they were right about the violence.
"Is it immigrants who are upset?" Ty Lee asked as she tries to pick out decent clothes. She did not have anything that is worthy, and it made her frustrated.
"No, actually, it's mostly people in the Fire Nation who used to own the land, like the Apai Mountain Range, but it got taken when Sozin industrialized and unified the country." On Ji swelled with pride at her knowledge of current events, while Ty Lee just nodded along.
Ty Lee knew about that, but she had no idea people cared about that kind of thing in Caldera. Ty Lee could remember watching people discuss the politics over drinks, and often it did come up. The people had to sacrifice some of what was theirs in order to better the country.
That was Sozin's mission, and many people did not disagree with it, despite him being long dead and burned. Ty Lee did see the unsettling mines popping up and the farms becoming tied into the system, but she tried not to pay attention to that kind of thing.
Ty Lee thought about what the proper Caldera answer would be. She came up with, "Right. It's nice that they're not executed."
"Right," On Ji agreed with another smile. "You never told me I shouldn't be in your room."
Ty Lee shrugged. "It's nice to have people around. I grew up in a house with six sisters, and I've never had so much space or time to myself before. I don't even know what to do with it."
On Ji looked into the mirror and adjusted her hair behind Ty Lee as the elder girl did her make-up for the evening.
"You came here to be a dancer?" On Ji asked and Ty Lee nodded while unscrewing the cap of blush. "I would love to be a dancer. It looks like so much fun."
"You've never done it yourself?" Ty Lee inquired in surprise and On Ji nods.
From the look on her face, Ty Lee decided not to pester her any further on the topic.
Mai looked at Azula and sighed. Then she sighed again. And once more before Azula finally looked up at her.
"You've been staring at those for three days now."
"I'm making progress," Azula snapped, yet again.
"Come out with me and Zuko," Mai said as she gently rested her hands on Azula's shoulders. Azula felt as cold as ice and as slick as it too. "Change your clothes first."
"You may not order me around," Azula said and Mai did not respond until her girlfriend got up and went to go locate clothing.
Ty Lee could not help but be curious about the girl she saw with the boss's daughter. The young man between them had a hideous scar, but was handsome save for that. The girl, however, walked in and filled the room with a presence that Ty Lee could not explain, and that had no aura colors to apply to it either.
Some people were just capable of doing that. Ty Lee could open doors with just a smile, but other people could open doors and change the emotions of everyone in the room.
That girl was one of them.
Haru leaned over the counter. "Be extra nice to them. Mai is obviously the boss's daughter, but the boy and girl are close with them."
Close with them and deep into the underworld of the Kudeta Society.
"I'm nice to everybody," Ty Lee said, flashing a glamorous smile at him.
He just laughed and shook his head. She might do alright.
It did not go alright. Ty Lee stammered, she stumbled, and she made a complete fool of herself. And now she was hiding and pretending to be very busy cleaning dishes.
She nearly smashed one of the plates into Haru's face when he snuck up behind her.
"You got further than most people do," Haru said, still looking entertained. Ty Lee glared and splashed him weakly with the soapy water. He rubbed it off. "You did. They're hard."
"I've never been so embarrassed in my life," Ty Lee said quietly, staring at her soaked hands. "I sounded like a moron. She probably thinks I'm crazy."
Haru noted the distinct singular form of she, but before he could ask any more, they were interrupted.
"There's a fight. The Kudeta and the Triad ─ !" shouted the busboy at Haru, and the bartender instantly sprung into action with his earthbending.
Ty Lee stood there, motionless, until she heard the crash of thunder that rattled the room. That nearly gave her a heart attack. She heard broken glass, a table, screams. She could feel the heat, and she panicked before grabbing a knife from the block, as if it would help her at all.
She crept forward, hiding behind the bar as she watched something much more nauseating than the riots she saw on the streets. Ty Lee squeezed her eyes shut, and thought she should wait it out. There was no point in fighting; she did not feel very brave.
But Ty Lee could not help turning around the corner to look at what was happening. The girl was bending a bright, transfixing cerulean color. Ty Lee's lips parted as she watched the lightning, watched the boy and his fast muscles and fast bursts of fire, watched knife-work that Ty Lee could not do with the one she was clutching. Those opposing them were nearly as equipped.
Ty Lee drew attention by staring for too long, and then she had two men coming at her, grabbing her by the shoulders as she jabbed the knife backwards and missed, letting it fall onto the floor and slide away out of her reach.
She gasped, feeling utterly and completely doomed.
It was when she was being dragged away that she blacked out.
Ty Lee opened her eyes to see the silence around her. She fell into a more comfortable seated position and exhaled. The room smelled so strongly of liquor, fire and blood that it made Ty Lee more lightheaded.
"Did you see that?" and variations were murmured before Ty Lee was grabbed again, this time by the boy of the trio who she stammered and blabbered like a fool in front of.
She felt so dizzy as she stared at what she thought she might have done.
The room was speckled with the corpses of the people who obviously had planned an attack on their enemies. Ty Lee's eyes found Haru as he stared, his hands tightly clutching the bar.
Was that me? Ty Lee wanted to ask, but she was too breathless. She just allowed herself to be pushed into a carriage, against the plush seats, and she stared at her blooded and trembling hands in shock.
The girl, the one Ty Lee thought was formidable, and beautiful and so sexual, had a gaze fixed on Ty Lee that she did not like.
Ty Lee struggled to keep her eyes open as they left the familiar district in Caldera.