Zheng, Ting, and Lien snatched him from the middle of a class, and Hayato didn't even have the opportunity to apologize to his frightened students before the three pulled him out of the amphitheater. They left the Ba Sing Se University in great hurry, informing Hayato about the situation only when they were already in the car and on their way to the Western Quadrant.
It looked like they had kicked the vulturewasp nest yesterday with their little meeting with Chin. According to Zheng, Chin had changed his mind. There was a guy visiting the hideouts of the former Earth Empire soldiers, telling them that Chin would raise an army from their ranks and reenact Kuvira's campaign by uniting the warring Earth States into a single Earth Empire again. None of the three had met this person yet, but they had solid word on him appearing in their recently evacuated headquarters at the Outer Wall.
Lien also told Hayato that there had been a huge activity around the Unity Corps depots all morning. She had seen all sorts of equipment transported from a weapon bunker to an airship hangar - clearly a sign of war preparations.
Ting brought slightly graver news: sensing their dreams finally coming true, the ex-soldiers had purged their ranks last night, and several hideouts had been razed, their occupants killed. This was terrible, but not entirely unexpected; the pressure building up in these men and women since Kuvira's fall was just asking for a violent outburst. Chin had seen it, and this was probably the reason why he had changed his mind.
By the time their car turned into the parking lot of an apartment complex in the Western Quadrant, Hayato was sure that their efforts to help the ex-soldiers had not been in vain. Seven months ago, he had founded this movement from a bunch of enthusiastic sympathizers and idealist students, and now he was walking through the gate of well-deserved success.
Chin's Army was going to become a reality.
They still had a loose end though. Zheng had gotten the message during the morning. Two of their activists had been caught in the surge of violence, and they had witnessed something they definitely shouldn't. Hoshi and Kalden were good people, and Hayato had no reason to question their words, but their message was just as interesting as nonsensical – definitely worth investigating.
As they got out of the car, Hayato made a quick headcount for himself, in case things would go awry. Zheng and Ting were former Earth Empire soldiers, part of the lucky few who had found a way back to a normal life. These two young men had the military experience and the metalbending for a good fight, but nothing extraordinary. Lien was a non-bender and just an average young university student in all respects, but she was quite brawny for a girl so maybe she wouldn't be a burden, either. Hayato himself was in a good shape for an old man, and he was a decent firebender too – unfortunately he had skipped military service while was with the Fire Nation, and hadn't gained any combat experience since then either as a professor of the Ba Sing Se University.
These were rather poor odds, but they had a bunch of other activists on their way.
"Hey, look, isn't that Hoshi?" Lien's voice cut Hayato's chain of thoughts in half. "Who is that guy with her?"
As Hayato turned his head to the left where Lien was pointing, he saw a tall man standing in front of a newsstand and a woman with him. The woman was indeed Hoshi, Hayato easily recognized her from her swollen belly. She was in a rather bad shape: the ugly bruise on her left face and the way she was leaning against the newsstand to spare her sprained ankle were signs of a rough night.
The man, however, was unfamiliar. He looked like a beggar or maybe a vagabond.
"He is Seiwon, Hoshi's boyfriend," noted Ting. "He is a former Earth Empire soldier, a rather unsuccessful one for that. Just a petty slacker and gambler, don't mind him if you don't have to."
Hayato could easily see the 'gambler' part: there was a large pile of used up raffle tickets next to Seiwon, and he was busy trying another one.
As they approached the couple, Hayato could hear their conversation, too, another valuable insight into what Ting had meant.
"Come on, two cabbages and one treasure chest?!" cried Seiwon dramatically as he finished his ticket. "That's almost two-thousand Yuans!"
"Almost…" added the newsvendor with a smile. "But as it now stands, it is nothing!"
"This is my lucky day! I feel it in the air!" Seiwon scrapped the ticket and threw it to the pile. Then he turned to the silently watching Hoshi. "Can you buy me more of these tickets? I'm so close! The next one is going to make me rich for sure!"
Hoshi's embarrassed smile was a clear indicator of what she thought, but she eventually bought four more tickets.
The grateful expression she had when Hayato and the others approached them was beyond description.
"Hi, Hoshi…" Zheng greeted her, and after a quick size-up he left it right there, ignoring Seiwon altogether. "What are you doing here?"
The question took Hoshi a little bit unprepared. She looked around with puzzlement written all over her face, like she suddenly became unsure where she was standing at the moment.
"Uhmmm… I live here?"
"I mean, what are you doing on the street where everyone can see you?"
This finally opened Hoshi's eyes to her current situation. She looked around again, checking the street in panic, but it was empty. Fortunately for her, the City Watch avoided this neighborhood.
"Let's go inside," Hayato proposed as he escorted Hoshi away. "We are not safe here."
His companions nodded and left for the apartment complex. Hayato and Hoshi followed them closely, and Seiwon closed the line without saying a word.
As they took the stairs, Lien and Ting quickened their steps and their moves became stiffer, as if they were sensing danger.
"We are being watched," Zheng explained before Hayato could inquire.
Hoshi gasped for air, and her face turned chalk-white.
"Kalden! We left him alone!" she squeaked. "Hurry up, he could be in danger!"
Lien reached the door to their house first and flung open the door with the same momentum. She rushed in, but popped back up only a moment later to sign that the place is safe. Ting quickly took the opportunity to push the bunch through the door and close it shut behind them.
Hayato could easily imagine how subtle their entry could have been. If the neighbors had any sense, then they would call the City Watch right away. Luckily, at least Kalden didn't mind them at all as he was snorting peacefully on the couch in the middle of the living room.
Hoshi ran to him as soon as she could, and shook him out of his sleep. The others took a seat around them, Hayato himself choosing an armchair right next to the siblings.
"We don't have much time here, so let's jump to the point," Ting started unceremoniously. He drew forth a tattered piece of paper from his pouch and threw it to the coffee table lying in front of the couch. "I found this message from you this morning at one of our communications drop off points. It says that last night, a group of, and I quote here, 'humanoid spirits that glow white and their limbs end in spikes' attacked you while you were meeting with a group of ex-soldiers. These spirits then proceeded to slaughter all the soldiers, including their leader, who was also tortured. The spirits were accompanied by two bloodhound-spirits who…" Ting scratched his head as he reached the most unbelievable part. "Who saved you two from these spirits, then brought you to a park in the Western Quadrant."
"Yes, that's pretty much it," admitted Kalden faintly. "Those bloodhound-spirits also did something with Hoshi… Like, she had this weird dream… Please, Hoshi, tell them!"
"When the spirit-bloodhounds took us away, I fainted," Hoshi started. Hayato drew closer, but the others listened to her with varying degrees of skepticism. "And I had this… vision. I was in an empty, barren plateau. It was very misty too. I felt lost, like I had been there for a very long time, without the chance to leave. Then I looked down and noticed that I was in the body of a bloodhound-spirit!"
"Wow, that's bizarre!" interrupted Zheng with a scornful whistle, but Hayato hushed him.
"So, the mist started to whirl, and took up the form of another bloodhound-spirit wearing some sort of skin-tight metal armor. The mist changed again, and the armored bloodhound-spirit turned into Kalden!" Her voice rose, and Hayato caught a strange flash in her eyes. He couldn't decide whether it was insanity or not. "Then my baby kicked and I woke up!"
A long, awkward silence befell on the room.
"Huh, a wild story!" Seiwon's words met only speechless agreement from Lien, Ting and Zheng. He took this as an encouragement and sat down to the couch next to Kalden, taking Hoshi with him. "You see dear, you don't have to worry." He gently tapped Hoshi's belly. "Family is protecting you even in your nightmares! Even if you find yourself in an ugly place and in a bloodhound-spirit's body, our little fellow is going to be right there to wake you up!"
"Come on, this is sheer insanity!" Zheng picked up Kalden's message from the table and theatrically tore it into pieces. "You two were just knocked out and had a weird dream!"
"The same dream?" retorted Kalden, but Zheng just shrugged. "You have to believe us!" He turned around, but could only see doubt on the others' faces.
"Look, Kalden, it isn't that we don't believe you," Ting noted thoughtfully. His calm voice blunted the edge of the escalating conflict, though Hayato felt the affectation in it. "But we cannot act without some sort of hard evidence."
"Evidence?!" Kalden took down his shirt, revealing the large bruises on his chest. They were undoubtedly shaped by a massive jaw. Hayato clearly saw the marks of the large fangs and the sore red skin around them. The professor was no doctor, but he could easily imagine that the latter was some sort of infection from animal saliva. "Here is your evidence!"
His outburst was rewarded with a long silence. Not even Zheng had anything to say.
"I'm not making this up out of whim," Kalden continued as he put his shirt back. "Those spirits were real. They massacred the soldiers, and if not for the spirit-bloodhounds, they would have killed me and Hoshi too. Worse still, they masqueraded as City Watch officers! We must warn everyone!"
Ting shook his head and let out a heavy sigh.
"It is too late. Yours was not the only problematic hideout last night. Dozens of others were attacked, hundreds died."
"This definitely requires further investigation," Hayato put in. His first words since they had entered this house immediately drew attention, and the others turned towards him as one. "However, there is one thing we can uncover even now. Kalden, you said that the spirits wore the bodies of City Watch officers. Can you describe these human shells? How did they look?"
This took Kalden a little bit unprepared. He massaged his head, then looked at Hoshi with a worrying expression. The young woman nodded, but her hesitation to do so was hard to miss.
"Well, there was this leader guy…" began Kalden. His wavering voice was definitely not the result of a hazy memory. "We kinda' know him, I mean, I couldn't recognize him there, but it hit me really hard this morning… When I looked into the news, and his face was in the front page…" He bit his lip as Zheng picked up the newspaper from the table and checked the small article in the bottom corner.
Hayato couldn't see the picture, only Zheng's face turning red.
"You don't say... Kalden, this is pure madness!"
"He was Baraz, the Commander of the City Watch!" Hoshi's cry cut into the already stressed atmosphere like a scissor into a veil and struck everyone in the room speechless.
"Baraz had a car accident last night." Ting walked to Zheng and took the newspaper from him. "We all know how he likes cars and racing, so this sounds alright."
"We also know how damn good a driver he is," added Lien as she was watching the outside through the front window. "The accident could be a cover-up."
"Maybe it was just a trick. A deception, if you like." Hayato tried to make the most reasonable explanation, and the others were seemingly eager to accept it. "It is time to re-evaluate our plans. The attack on the hideouts and the bloodhound-spirits' strange behavior must be two different things if Kalden's story is right. The spirits wanted to kill him and Hoshi, yet the bloodhound-spirits prevented this – the stakes were not corresponding, so they played their own games."
"Then why were the bloodhound-spirits even there?" asked Ting.
"Coincidence, or maybe they were drawn to the violence," Zheng answered instead of the professor. It was good to see these two slowly understanding the situation. "Or maybe they had been watching Hoshi for some time."
This visibly startled Hoshi. The possibility of those monsters keeping an eye on her for whatever reason was definitely an uncomfortable idea, Hayato could agree.
"I won't let them hurt Hoshi, I can promise you that!" hissed Kalden, but his poor condition blunted his intention. Technically, he had already failed to protect his sister from the bloodhound-spirits, and Hayato had no illusions about the young man's future chances, especially now, with those injuries.
"I'm with ya' buddy!" added Seiwon with badly affected enthusiasm. "Ain't no bloodhound-spirit will hurt my Hoshi as long as we are around!"
Seiwon's reward for his hollow heroism was a kiss from Hoshi and an unconvinced snort from Kalden.
"Well then, you are definitely not safe here anymore." Hayato stood up from the chair and helped Kalden and Hoshi to their feet too. "Now, I'll ask you to come with us. We are going to have a meeting with someone who might hold answers for us all. Then, we can forge a plan for the future, and act accordingly." He looked around, making a short, meaningful eye contact with everyone in the room. "If this is agreeable…" The people around him nodded in unison. "Then we should move. Let's find out what's happening here."