Successors to the Blue Spirit: Catching a Legend
By Violent Vi (Rebooted)
A/N: I am looking for a beta reader. If you are interested, please PM me.
Earth Kingdom
New Gaipan Village
Jiang Rong Inn and Tea House
Midmorning
Chen Kun wore an immaculately cleaned and starched changshan as he sat at the inn sipping his Drum Mountain White Cloud tea. On the table was his red, silver, and gold tasseled hat that proclaimed him a twelveth-grade civil servant and thus equivalent to a military captain or naval lieutenant.
To the locals, Chen was a minor government official who was sent in to replace Old Man Wu when Wu retired. Chen was not a young man. Most men in his position would be in their twenties, sons of rich or noble families. Instead, Chen in his late forties, thin, and wore spectacles. He bore the hallmarks of a commoner who climbed up the ranks on raw talent. They would never climb to the top three elite civil service ranks, but would instead be the mid-level bureaucrats that got the work done.
Like other civil servants, Chen would go around, perform his tasks, take small bribes…in short, he acted like the thousands of other minor government employees stationed throughout the Earth Kingdom. Corrupt, but only minorly so in keeping with his station as a scribe for the Bureau of Internal Statistics.
What many in the Earth Kingdom, even government employees, did not know was that the Secret Police was a hidden unit inside the Bureau. Not everyone in the Bureau was or even knew that undercover police officers were Bureau civil service employees. However, every secret policeman had a cover identity and drew a salary and expense allowance as an employee of the Bureau.
The Bureau of Internal Statistics was the best place to hide a secret policeman.
The Bureau was everywhere. It has hundreds, if not thousands, of scribes, accountants, and auditors who existed to spend their days talking to people while taking a continuous census of everything that could be of interest to the Earth Kingdom. If you wanted to know a specific farmer's harvest in a certain remote village from over two hundred years ago, the answer would be somewhere in the Bureau's internal files.
The Bureau's researchers were everywhere asking questions from everyone. They were the scribes and nameless accountants that measured everything from birthrates and death rates to the exact quantity and consistency of fecal matter produced by the nation's chicken-pigs. Everyone viewed them as harmless wonks who would write up meaningless reports and take small bribes.
What the Bureau did not know was that Chen was the last of the infamous Dai Li.
Chen could not recall his birth name.
Chen could not recall whether or not he had any parents or siblings.
Chen could barely remember a life outside of the Dai Li.
Chen could remember was coming into Ba Sing Se with a band of refugees fleeing the Fire Nation and begging on the streets. He was six or seven when the Dai Li Daymaster spotted his potential and had him kidnapped off the alleys of the lower city.
To this day, Chen did not know why the Dai Li conscripted him into their ranks. He would admit to himself that he was never the best earth bender. At best, he was moderately talented at rock flinging. He was more likely to be a thief than an earth bending champion.
Yet the former Dai Li recalled the training.
It was harsh, brutal, effective. It transformed a boy whose dreams once were of being the best earth football striker in Ba Sing Se into a deadly enforcer of order.
Stealth, precision, and vigilance were his tenants. Rock gloves, shoes, and surveyor chains were his weapons. Kidnapping, assassination, betrayal, terror, and brainwashing where the norms that governed his life.
Of the five boys in the 'hand' or initial training cohort who started with him, only he survived. At twelve, his final test was to survive the hunt against the four older, more powerful benders of his training cohort. He drew the black stone. They drew the green jade. His instructors had stacked the deck against him.
Chen was given one hundred beats of a drum to run down the tunnels before the four others hunted him down. To win, he had to kill the other boys in his cohort. To live, Chen had to kill the trainer in such a way that the death looked like an unfortunate accident.
The young trainee was not supposed to live and yet he did. He claimed his place in the ranks of the Dai Li in the traditional manner. Soon, Chen earned a reputation among the ranks for his effectiveness in undercover operations. The training masters knew that Chen killed the instructor, but he did so according to the unwritten laws that governed the order.
An instructor who could not protect himself from one of the expendable students whose only function was to act as a living target for the others to be bloodied did not deserve any pity. A trainer was supposed to know everything about his charges and be watchful for the cunning ones like Chen who kept their skills hidden.
At thirteen, Chen was officially welcomed into the Dai Li as an official trainee. Eight more years of further brutal training sought to remove any consideration of compassion. Emotions were a tool to be used against the foe. Caring a liability.
However, Chen was different. He still had feelings. He hid his emotions well, but unlike the stoic majority, Chen acknowledge them and used them to give him the passion to push through his physical limitations and become something greater than his peers.
Being different, Chen endured the harshest training program that the Dai Li inflicted on its aspirants. He endured many conditioning sessions designed to break him or kill him. Frigid cloth, scorching heat, ice water, flame, hard stone, sand were all familiar to the Dai Li trainee. He had killed several more of his training cohort, Not out of blood-lust, but rather necessity. The senior Dai Li did not trust a free thinker like Chen. However, there were traditions. Instructors could not directly target a specific candidate. However, if a candidate died as a result of over-enthusiastic training...it was a regrettable necessity...the cost of building an elite defend of Ba Sing Se's cultural heritage.
At twenty-one, he earned his place in the ranks as a brother in the ranks by hunting down and killed a senior Dai Li agent who had gone rogue.
Unlike the others who worked in pairs, Chen, by fate and by choice, worked alone. No one trusted Chen to be their partner and Chen was glad to work alone.
Chen was always the odd turtle-duck who swam away from the herd.
Unlike other cadets, he was a freeborn and was not brought up in the multi-generational eugenics programs that the Earth Kingdom engaged in to breed superior earth benders. His mind was different than the others, despite the repeated hypnotherapy sessions, Chen never forgot that he was underdog who would survive and eventually become the alpha in charge.
Chen had served the Kuei the 52nd Earth King at Bang Sing Se. He had served the Grand Secretariat Long Feng. He had served Princess Azula of the Fire Nation and watched her descent into madness, even before Sokka the Destroyer completed the breaking of the Fire Nation. He spent seven years in the death cells awaiting his execution. However, the rise of the Blue Spirit spared him and a few of his comrades the death sentence they earned.
For now, the Earth Kingdom had power and the Dai Li followed whomever had the most power. To outsiders, the Dai Li were a monolithic organization that never show any signs of fracturing. Inside, individuals were engaged in Byzantine plots for individual advancement and power, or in his case, mere survival. He survived seventeen official sanctioned, authorized attempts on his life. He killed the assassin and then later killed the rival who sought his death.
The Dai Li was perhaps the greatest group of earth benders ever assembled. Toph Bei Fong was once the best individual bender. However, the Dai Li could fight a thousand champions like the Bei Fongs and as long as they did so collectively…defeat the champion. An ancient Dai Li commander once noted that quantity has a quality all its own.
Chen has survived the Blue Spirit's ambush of the Dai Li. Not due to Chen skill, but rather due to accidental food poisoning. Fate ensured that Chen was at a healer's clinic instead of accompanying the others when they ambushed the Blue Spirit. Fate had spared him and tonight he would repay the favor.
Chen knew better than to return back to the Earth King empty handed. Instead he changed his identity and purchased a minor position in the Bureau of Internal Statistics until he became a Senior Field Examiner and headed a small four-man examination team.
Chen had carefully infiltrated the village.
For eight years, he tracked down the Blue Spirit to New Gaipan Village. It was the perfect place for the fugitive he was hunting. The citizens of New Gaipan Village were survivors of an Earth Kingdom resistance scheme to destroy their village. The Avatar and an old Fire Nation citizen saved the people village from Jet and his band of Freedom Fighters.
New Gaipan Village was one of the few areas that outlawed slavery and would free any former Fire Nation citizen that entered it borders. They turned a blind eye to the number of its citizens that had the features of former Fire Nation citizens. On paper, Gaipan was a logging village. In actuality, it was one of the hotbeds for smuggling between the Earth Kingdom, the Swamp Tribes, and the remnants of the Fire Nation. It would be a good place for any fire bender who needed to hide from the authorities.
Chen politely nodded at the inn keeper. Chen knew that the inn keeper was a fire bender. He saw the inn keeper fire bending tea to the perfect temperature. The inn keeper knew that Chen knew about the tea and exactly how it was kept perfectly warm. However, all sides knew that Chen would not give up the easy life of being out in the countryside to return back to the city. Being out in the countryside meant that Chen could keep more of bribes he collected rather than remitting it upwards to his bosses.
Chen silently thanked the innkeeper and left a few coins on the table before leaving the inn's tea room. He saw the eldest son of Li, the tea merchant, delivering a crate of tea, followed by a horde of children.
Good…less bodies in the way.
Chen would visit Li tonight. He would get his prize. Today, would be the last day he would be stuck in this no name village. Tonight, he would capture the infamous Blue Spirit. He would capture the Fire Lord in Exile, Zuko, son of Ozai.
However, Chen remembered his training…his experience. Planning was necessary, but the enemy always had a vote in how the plan unfolded. Earth benders aspire to be rigid like the unyielding walls of Ba Sing Se. However, rigidity was an illusion that only the stupid embraced. Better to be like sand, flow around your opponent, untouchable and yet be able to suffocate them as you wear them down.
If things went wrong, today would be Chen's last day. The former Dai Li looked up at the sun. Seven years on death row taught Chen to appreciate the little things that many take for granted.
Duty commanded him to act, but Chen would act later when the odds were in his favor.
Instead of rushing to the Li farmstead, Chen would return home, kiss his wife, a former Joo Dee from Ba Sing Se, and play earth football with his five-year-old son, Lei. If today was going to be his last, at least he could tell the gods that while he died for duty, he lived for his family.
On the way home, Chen looked at the news bulletin at the scores.
The Upper Ring Capitals lost two to three against the Lower Ring Wallrunners. Apparently, the Wallrunners' forward Yung Yasuhito has stolen the inbound pass from the Capitals mid-fielder Kim Bo-Kyum and kicked it out to the Wallrunner's elite striker Park Ji Sung for the assist just seconds before stoppage time ended.
Chen smiled…he had just won twelve silver li from Yin Fu.
He remembered playing with Yung Yasuhito's father and uncles as a child in the alleys of the outer rings. If life were different, Chen wondered…which team would he play for… The Upper Ring Capitals paid more but their game plan was too methodical for his tastes. The Lower Ring Wallrunners were wild…unpredictable…more Chenlike. Chen imagined himself in the number 9 grey and green jersey playing striker. He could imagine the cheers as he kicked in the game winning goal.
If wishes were ostrich-horses, we all die, drowning in a mountain of shit. I have a job to do…it's time to get back to work.
Who would suspect that an elite Dai Li operative was such an earth football fanatic and family man.
Southern Water Tribe
Sokka Office
Noon
Sokka hated politics.
As the Chieftain of the Southern Water Tribe for the past sixteen years, Sokka quickly mastered the art of back stabbing and double dealing. This was not out of curiosity, but rather necessity.
Any signs of weakness and the other nations will gang up on you.
For a lad that once thought that being a warrior was the pinnacle of manliness, Sokka became a scholar and an expert in the history of many nations. He memorized the 16,000 characters of the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Fire Nation. He studied the Commentaries of Zuo, Gongyang, Guliang, and Gongyang that expounded on the Spring and Autumn Annuals. He devoured the seven military classics of the Earth Kingdom, Tan Daoji's Thirty-Six Strategies, and twenty-four histories covering the various dynasties that once ruled the Earth Kingdom.
He would grudgingly admit to becoming quite the scholar. Being a leader was not about muscle size, but rather being cagey and knowing when to act, to resist, or to wait for the opportune moment.
However, today would not be a day of reflection. Today, he had to cast off his eldest daughter into the turbulent waters of international politics. He had so much to do and so little time to prepare her. Odd were that he would not see her for years, if ever.
"Ming Bei Fong, I hereby recognize you as the eldest daughter of Toph Bei Fong and the eldest child of Sokka, Chieftain of the Water Tribe…"
Ming gasped in shock as her dream came true.
"Yes, Ming, I am legitimizing you and your siblings as my children."
"Suki, is going to shit a brick!" the fifteen-year-old gushed out in joy.
Sokka suppressed a memory. It was like seeing his little sister again. He remembered Katara bouncing around in joy after her first successful penguin sled ride down the hill.
"Yes, Suki has already informed me in great detail about the size, make up, and hardness of the brick. However, enough about her."
Ming was about to bounce like she had not since she was six. Sokka remembered when Ming and a bunch of the Fire Nation slave children had raided the Southern Water Tribe's sugar stash.
"Ming, it's not all fun and games – there is a price to being the daughter of a Chieftain. Your life has just ceased to be your own."
Ming stopped bouncing in joy and started to panic, "Father, are you going to marry me off?"
Sokka shook his head, "No…we are the Southern Water Tribe. We will never breed our daughters like cattle the way the Northern Tribe does. It almost happened to your great-grandmother, Kanna. She fled here to avoid being a brood mare."
Sokka almost spat out the next statement in hate. "No, I rather face the King of Hell with only a bucket of water than to marry one of my daughters for politics. No, there is something that only you can do. You will have to leave the Southern Water Tribe for a long time."
As soon as the words left his mouth, Sokka knew that he had just earned another ass kicking session from Katara when he finally caught up with her in the afterlife. While technically not a line, there was no way that the Earth King would resist the opportunity to solidify an alliance with the Southern Water Tribe and integrate a strong earth bending bloodline into the Ba Sing Se royal family.
"But father, mother needs me."
"Your mother has your brother Kim Anh and your little sisters who can help her while you are gone. I personally will make sure your mother is well taken care of."
Sokka looked his daughter in the eye, "You can best help your mother by going to the Earth Kingdom and complete a simple mission for me. Once you complete it, the Earth King is going to grant you and your family enough wealth to reseed the Bei Fong name and fortune. Imagine being able to return to Gaoling and see the cherry blossoms bloom on your ancestral home. Imagine being able to return your mother back to her childhood home. Imagine going to lands where the only place you see ice is in a dessert or cold drink."
Ming was not fully convinced, but Sokka had set the trap and baited it with Ming dreams. He looked at his daughter's face as she weighed the possibilities and drawbacks. Ming's face scrunched in a way that Katara's face once did when she was deep in thought.
Good, cautious, Ming is a survivor and in due time a capable player. If she was a son, she would definitely be my heir. If only my sons were half as good, I would not worry about the Tribe the day I retire from this desk and take on my next role as a fisherman.
Besides, it's time to make things right. I'm not getting any younger. Also, Dae-Song should stop being a spoiled lazy whiner and whip himself into shape if he did not believe that his place as the heir-apparent is certain. Kim Anh does better in his studies, works harder, and practices his sword forms. The Tribe cannot afford an incompetent as Chieftain. Only by showing strength, can we prevent the others from seeing just how weak we really are.
The scrunch vanished from Ming's face. She looked up at him like Katara use to when she was three and Sokka use to make her beg for her favorite seal jerky treat.
Sokka suppressed the memories. Azula and her traitorous Dai Li killed his sister. Nothing would bring her back. Besides, it is only natural that Ming would have inherited some resemblance and mannerisms from her aunt Katara.
Katara, I know when it's my turn on the wheel, I bet you will be waiting to kick my ass. There is not much I can do for Ming. I cannot risk conflict with Kyoshii nor the half dozen other Earth Kingdom fiefdoms if I made things right. If it was just me that would suffer, I would do so.
However, it's the entire Southern Water Tribe that will pay the price if I falter. It's only my reputation for being brutal with my enemies and the traditional alliances that Kyoshii maintained that keep the Northern Water Tribe from turning us into its protectorate. This is the best I can do.
I know it's like taunting a starving seal pup with a fish and then kicking it when it finally approaches. However, Ming will have a chance to build a life of her own life, become something better than the bastard daughter of a has-been, broken-down Water Tribe idiot.
Sokka held out an ivory scroll case sealed with purple ribbon and a wax seal.
"I hereby grant my eldest daughter the title of Ason and appoint her as Second Secretary to the staff of the Southern Water Tribe's ambassador to the Earth Kingdom and special envoy. Her authority will be valid in the Earth Kingdom and any other points as her duties dictate."
Ming had a genuine smile as she took the scroll case. Sokka could almost see Katara's smile on Ming's face. He quickly schooled his face to hide his troubled thoughts.
"Here is your letter of credence. I have already received the Earth King's response. He has agreed to your appointment as Second Secretary to the Southern Water Tribe diplomatic mission. In three weeks, you will depart on the morning tide on the Lady Kya. Until then, your mother and I will be teaching you everything we know about the Earth Kingdom."
"Ming this is your chance to make thing right…if not for you, do it for your mother."
Sokka felt dirty as he suckered his child into a fool's bet. The only consolation was that he was not as bad as Fire Lord Ozai. He did not burn his child and send its on a fool's quest. All she would have to do is spend a few years tracking a shadow and if she found it, let the nearest Earth Kingdom garrison take all the risk of capturing the Blue Spirit.
Tonight, I'm going to get seriously shit-faced.
Earth Kingdom
Li Homestead
Midnight
Li woke up with a gasp.
Danger approaching.
However, Li's instincts were too slow. An earth bender had captured Li and his wife. The surveyor's chains and stone bindings told him that this capture was a master earth bender. If this one was not Dai Li, then was at least an earth bender on par with one.
"Crown Prince…no…I believe it's now…Fire Lord Zuko. Your Majesty, I am Senior Inspector Chen Kun of the Earth Kingdom Secret Police Force. I apologize for waking you up so rudely. It seems that there is standing imperial warrant for your arrest. There are numerous charges pending against you…most of which carry the death penalty.
"Before you protest, the law is quite clear. You did not arrive in the Earth Kingdom on a diplomatic passport. Therefore, under international convention, you cannot claim diplomatic immunity. Since the Fire Nation is no longer a sovereign power, you cannot exert the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Due to your expertise in fire bending, fighting, and history of repeatedly escaping from captivity, I, regretfully, had to treat you as I would any prisoner of the highest escape risk."
Oh, gods no…What will…
"Do not worry. There is currently no warrant out for one Duchess Ty Li of the Fire Nation. The only reason she is being currently restrained is for the safety for her upcoming child. As for any other children you may or may not have, I did not see any children inside the house at the time of arrest, and therefore do not have to report any speculation as to the existence of any other child. If you agree to play nice, at least until I successfully deliver you to the garrison at Yu Shui Zhai, then I see no reason for me to put down any speculations that I may or may not have. I too am a family man. I do not hold children responsible for the sins of their father."
If Li was still Zuko…if he did not have nearly two decades of fate beating the defiance of out of him…if Chen did not hold the fates of his children over his head, Li would have fought. Zuko would have fought regardless of the consequences. Li carefully mulled over the police inspector…no senior inspector's words.
Message received. I'll be a good little prisoner until Yu Shui Zhai.