PART 3: THE PLAY
Piandao always had a hard time leaving his palace and visiting another place within the Fire Nation. Technically, he was exiled by Fire Lord Azulon himself after he had left the army. He held no rights within the Fire Lord's domain, yet people went to great lengths to show that they still respected his non-existent citizenship. And the reason behind this unusual behavior was simple: everyone in the Fire Nation loved the thought that the best swordsman in the world is a fellow citizen. Their pride was greater than their fear of disobeying the Fire Lord's command.
By the time Piandao reached the entrance of the Ember Island Theater, he had been through at least three dozen formal greetings, all from high-ranking Fire Nation officials. If not for the Commander dragging him through his admirers, he would have been out there still, trapped amongst functionaries, ministers, generals, and politicians.
She was brilliant this night: her graceful shape was wrapped into a heavy silk robe in the color of the deepest black, a stark contrast to her face, which was bright from joy. She didn't even make an attempt to cover her terrible facial scar and from the looks of it, she wasn't bothered by it either. For the first time since they met after that tragic night, Piandao saw a woman free from the darkness that scarred her.
A wonderful sight indeed.
"Hurry up! We should take our seats before the theater gets crowded!" The Commander pulled Piandao through the main hall without stopping. She only slowed down when they reached their box, giving way to a small girl as she rushed out from the door. The woman followed the child with her sharp green eyes, hiding a soft smile behind her golden war fan while doing so.
A small, odd gesture and Piandao couldn't miss it either.
"Ten years ago," she said suddenly, "a girl ran past me just like this. She was playing catch with her sisters so I could barely see her back for a moment as she dashed by." The Commander licked her lips, and her eyes turned empty as she focused to a picture that existed only in her mind. "For fifteen years, I had no idea what my own daughter looked like!" Those sharp green eyes flashed up, and for a moment, Piandao could see a spark of madness in them. "As it turned out, I could have just looked into a mirror!"
Her confession took Piandao by surprise. Now that the real reason behind the Commander's odd behavior came forward, he found himself a little bit perplexed about how to react to this information.
The Commander's daughter was another topic that left Piandao conflicted each time it came up. As his pursuit to perfect swordsmanship filled his time, Piandao had never had the chance to establish long-term relationships other than befriending some other men who had a similar view of life. He didn't have a wife, children or a family; the Commander was the first and only woman in his life.
And then, there was this girl. Roughly a decade ago, Piandao had visited her on Kyoshi Island, chasing a notion that maybe he did have a daughter after all. Even though the Commander was adamant that her girl wasn't Piandao's, he still had a good reason to think differently: the Commander and Piandao had spent several nights together just a few days prior that tragic incident. And when he first saw the little girl, he knew they were connected.
His contemplation was disrupted by an elbow in his side.
"You move like a snail-tortoise!" hissed the Commander and dug her elbow a little deeper into Piandao's side. "Pick up some speed! I don't want to miss the opening scene!"
They took their seats in the front row, and from there, they had a perfect view of the stage. The curtain rolled up only moments after they had sat down, but the Commander still found time to snuggle up to Piandao before the first scene started.
Piandao braced himself for the worst, and for a second, the nightmare became real. Sokka's actor was the same nameless bungler who had ruined the Way of the Thousand Swords with his shameful acting. At that point, Piandao nearly left the theater. The memories of that outrageous and disrespectful play were almost too much for him. As a master swordsman, Piandao had exceptional self-control, but even he had his limits.
However, this play quickly drowned into mediocrity. The story made its best to be accurate and the bad acting was counterbalanced with the dull staging. Sometimes even the casting was spot on: Prince Zuko, Iroh, and King Bumi were perfect, and Mizuki was wonderful, as always – even though her scene was short and that idiot Sokka-actor wrecked its ending.
The first intermission came quickly, and it was very welcomed by the audience as far as Piandao could see. Servants swarmed into the boxes to bring refreshment to the high-ranking guests sitting there.
Piandao had just finished his glass of water when the young woman arrived. She walked right to them, bowing first to the Commander and then to Piandao.
"Commander… Master Piandao…" she muttered timidly. "May I speak with you for a moment?"
The brown robes she wore only made her plain beauty even more obvious. Her features, her face and her body were all just the better half of average, candlelight in front of the scorching sun that was the almost supernatural beauty of the Commander. The only interesting thing was the slight red tint in her hair, but it was almost unnoticeable.
"Mizuki!" The Commander's voice made the young woman reel a little bit. "What a pleasant surprise!"
"You can join us," added Piandao quickly as he could see the nervousness in the actress' eyes. She had something important to say.
Mizuki sat down next to the Commander. She kept Piandao outside of arm's reach as if she was afraid that he would strike her.
"First, I must say that it is a great honor to be in your company," she began with a heavy breath. "I hope you enjoy the play…"
"We all know that we don't," interrupted the Commander. "You are the only redeeming feature of this pile of boring junk."
"Thank you…"
"So, what do you want from us?"
This was the point where Mizuki's eyes flashed up with fear. She was now clearly panicking and as far as Piandao could determine, the actress was on the verge of crying too.
"You know that they have blackmailed me to perform in this?"
"We thought so," inserted Piandao.
"You should have been more careful with the Basilisk!" added the Commander cheerfully. Mizuki shuddered when the Commander spoke, and it betrayed her for Piandao immediately.
"All I'm going to do on that stage… It wasn't my idea!" Mizuki's voice was now barely audible from the fear. "I don't know how they uncovered all that stuff, and I never wanted to cooperate in putting it into the play either! But they forced me to do it!" The actress suddenly sprang from her seat only to fell on her knees in front of the Commander. "I beg for your pardon! I really do! But I have no choice!"
The Commander and Piandao exchanged glances. In her eyes, he could see that she had no idea why Mizuki was acting like this.
"Okay, I promise I won't be angry at you," said the Commander after a brief moment of awkward silence.
Mizuki bowed even deeper, almost kissing the Commander's feet in the process, then rushed out from the box without saying anything else.
"Blame the mind for the hand's actions," noted Piandao thoughtfully after Mizuki disappeared in the door. The Commander nodded.
"I really wonder what the writers dug up. Mizuki is not the kind of person who tends to freak out like this."
Piandao sighed. He had a very good idea about why the actress was so nervous.
"Mizuki is just an actress."
"She did her research, though." The Commander leaned closer to Piandao, and her voice changed to a whisper. "She visited the Boiling Rock and the Capital City Prison to gather information from the Kyoshi Warriors. She got lost in the Boiling Rock and missed her destination by a few blocks. By the time the word caught me that she was there, she left empty handed."
"You were in the Boiling Rock?" asked back Piandao. "Why?"
The Commander just pinched his nose.
"Not your business!" She leant even closer, her lips almost touched Piandao's ear. "Anyway, she hit the treasure pot in the Capital City Prison. She had a chat with both my initiates and the majority of the novices. The novices aren't really interesting here, but we all know how talkative Aoi and Kazue are. Especially about… a certain topic."
"Oh."
Piandao's dry reaction made the Commander frown.
"Don't 'oh' on me! If they really implemented that story into the play then maybe you will show up too!"
"Well, in that case, I hope I will get a better casting than the Avatar."
Realizing that Piandao didn't come to the same conclusion, the Commander sat back to her place while still staring at him as if she tried to look into his mind. She pouted and her eyes narrowed as she tried to see through Piandao.
He stood her gaze with a gentle smile on his face, but nothing more. For a long moment, they just looked into each other's eyes. Piandao relaxed his thoughts and let the ocean of warm green overtake his mind. He could feel the warmth of love and the breeze of affection. A pulsing wave of fear stirred the image, opening up a small window onto a furnace of ferocity and passion. Pale shadows of hatred were chased by swarming sparks of remorse – each time the fear disturbed the ocean, the shadows lashed out violently against their surroundings but the light of remorse prevented them from growing.
The eye was the mirror of the soul, and Piandao only needed a few seconds to have a read on the Commander through her sharp green eyes. The overall impression wasn't perfect, but it was still much better than the maelstrom of anger and hatred he used to see in those eyes. It was almost as if she had found some sort of inner peace.
They remained like that until the curtains rolled up. The master swordsman and the deadly beauty, eyes and thoughts interlocked in a swirl of emotions.
As the second act of the play began, the Commander turned her head away, blushing, and with a small, embarrassed smile on her face. Piandao almost asked her about the meaning of this smile, but ultimately, he too turned his attention to the stage.
There are things that must remain unanswered for the moment, after all.
Naturally, the second act let the playwright's fantasy loose, so the story quickly became a hodgepodge of silly misrepresentations. They had cast a large, bulky guy for Toph, the blind earthbender girl, and that was just the beginning. Piandao found the whitewashing of the sandbenders amusing though, as Appa – Avatar Aang's sky bison – was captured by evil Earth Kingdom soldiers in the play instead of the sandbender nomads.
Mizuki's first scene in the act was about the adventure on the Serpent's Pass, and her second scene depicted the Kyoshi Warrior's defeat at the hands of Princess Azula. The Commander endured this one with obvious irritation, as she began to fan herself with her golden Kyoshi Warrior war fan, but nothing more happened.
Then, Mizuki's third scene came, and the world turned upside down.
In the scene, the young actress portrayed Suki, the leader of the Kyoshi Warrior novices, in Fire Nation prison clothing and between fitting props that distantly represented a prison cell. There were some extras around her, representing the other Kyoshi Warrior novices. For some weird reason, there were seven of them, even though Piandao knew for sure that there were only six novices other than Suki.
"Oh, the mighty Fire Nation has defeated me and my sisters!" she cried with the usual great identification. Her sad voice was really touching, and a welcomed change after the bland acting of the others. "The elite warriors of the Earth Kingdom and the daughters of Avatar Kyoshi now lay vanquished in a dark and pitiful cell deep in the heart of the Fire Nation!"
"I only wish they were together…" noted the Commander quietly. "It would make things much easier!"
A brawny extra clad in a Fire Nation soldier uniform walked onto the stage, grabbed one of the novice-extras, kissed her, and then dragged her off the stage. The Ty Lee and Mai actresses also stepped into the scene and took away one novice-extra each.
"My warriors are falling!" Mizuki's face changed into a mask of pure terror. It clearly had nothing to do with her role though. "We are doomed! I am doomed!" Now she was looking directly at the Commander from the distance of the stage. The blood froze in Paindao's veins as he realized that his worse fear was about to become true. "Nobody is going to come to help me! My friends are captured or on the run from the fury of the magnificent Fire Nation! My father doesn't even know I exist!" The Commander's eyes suddenly sprung wide open from surprise. "And my mother abandoned me soon after I was born, and despised my existence ever since then!"
Piandao closed his eyes and just listened to the silence that had befallen to the theater after this monologue. Even though he couldn't see her, he could feel as the wife of the couple sitting behind them turned to his husband. He could feel her lips opening, to unleash the final blow.
"She must be a horrible mother!"
That was all. Those few whispered words hit their target instantly, as she was far too aware of her surroundings to miss them.
As he opened his eyes, Piandao saw as the Commander started up from her seat. She covered her mouth with one hand, but her tearful eyes betrayed the emotions that were slowly encroaching on her. Her other hand took a stronger grip on her war fan, and for a moment, it looked like she would explode in a murderous frenzy, turning this play into a bloodbath.
At that moment, Piandao seriously considered this as a likely event, so he readied himself to restrain the Commander. But the darkness fled from her face, only to give place to a surge of pain. The war fan hit the floor as she grabbed at her lower abdomen, and almost collapsed from the agony.
Piandao tried to catch her, but she stormed out from the box before he could get up. Wasting no time, he ran after her, only to find the empty corridor past the door. The Commander was gone, and Piandao knew that he wouldn't find her if she didn't want it.
He sighed, and after a little pondering, he walked away towards the writers' office. Piandao was a big fan of authenticity, but this part was a little bit too accurate, even for him. He had to talk with Pu On Tim to do something with this if he was still alive.
As he turned into the backstage area, he realized that eventually, he had probably got a mention in the play after all.
"My father doesn't even know I exist!" These were Mizuki's exact words.
"Depends on which man we are talking about," added Piandao quietly, so that it better reflected the truth.
