Disclaimer: The following chapter is entirely fictitious. Any similarity to the history of any person living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional, except when specifically noted otherwise in the cast and crew credits. All celebrity voices are impersonated and no celebrities have endorsed any aspect of this fic.

Chapter Nine: Behind Secretive Walls

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"Oh, Miss Kurogane, it is so nice of you to stop by," Keme said nicely from behind his chair.

"It was no problem, High Master Keme," Kurogane replied lowly.

"I apologize for this meeting being so late, but I heard you were in the vicinity so I decided to take advantage of you being here."

"It is not a problem," she forced herself to repeat.

"I actually have two propositions for you," he sighed, pushing himself to a standing position and stalking his way around his desk to his bookshelf. "My first one, Fire Lord Zuko is learning too much about us much too fast and he needs to be taken care of. I know you have done it once before, so I was going to ask you again."

"Yes, sir," she responded habitually.

"But the only problem is that he already knows too much about us. I wonder if our techniques will work on him, so I need you and several others to ambush him when he is alone."

"Yes, sir," she responded again.

"And I have one more request for you." He took a long pause before he asked his question to position himself behind her. "There is another half breed child, a mudblood to be specific, down south. Her name is Awinita and she was recently born to a couple so she is only a few months old."

"Sir, a child?" she asked with worry. The man's brows furrowed.

"Yes, a child," he said roughly. "She is well protected, so she must be taken care of before she gets old enough to defend herself."

"But—"

"I only say she needs to be killed, because as well as her parents, that whole family is nothing but trouble, including the aunt of this child, who may fall into the same path as her brother. Do you think you can do that for me?"

"Yes, sir," she answered yet again.

"Oh, and there is one more thing. The sister of Hiashi, Tsuchi, will be coming to our planet from Earth in a few days, she needs to be killed as well."

"If you do not mind me asking you, sir, but why? She no longer lives on our planet so should we really be concerned about her?"

"Yes, we must," he said harshly. "She must be made an example of. Just because she left our world does not mean that she can get away with her life."

"Yes, sir," she said quickly to stifle the fire that was brewing.

"So here are the files on your next targets," he smiled, handing her a small bag filled with scrolls. "You can read up on them and decided a course of action. If you need anything else—"

"Yes, sir, I actually had a question about something and I was wondering if maybe you knew the answer."

"Oh course, Miss Kurogane," he smirked suspiciously. "What is it that you need?"

She took a deep breath, unsure if she should answer, but going against her gut, she finally asked, "I was wondering about the timeline. I wanted to know more about the wall and how it worked… mostly out of curiosity, with all due respect." Keme smirked wickedly and gently brushed his hand on her bare shoulder, sending chills throughout her.

"Of course you would want to know," he said lowly in her ear. "But I am wondering why. It is not simply curiosity that would draw anyone to the wall. Why should I tell you the secrets behind the wall?"

"It is simply curiosity," she forced herself to say without trembling. "And I would really like to know." Keme chuckled lightly.

"You just want to know? Of course I can tell you." He let his hands drag across her back as he walked away, causing Kurogane's throat to swell up. "A hundred or so years ago, our founding fathers formed The Universal Resistance in order to keep a strict boundary between all four nations, since they could not simply live with each other in peace if they were intermixed.

"It was a fantastic plan to start with, and they garnered support from the greatest minds in the world, but they wanted to continue to be the greatest minds. History books were written by people, but only the winners, as you know. No one who would buy a book from the Fire Nation would want to hear about the ruthless genocide of the Air Nomads. They want to hear about how the Fire Nation defeated the Air Nomad's formal army in a fair battle of good versus evil, the evil, of course being my own people, the Air Nomads."

"Of course," she nodded in acknowledgment.

"History writers are the cruelest things to happen to literature. They have no shame about telling and spreading their putrid lies to everyone. That was something the founders of the Resistance wanted to avoid. They wanted unadulterated history, so that way the people of the Resistance knew why they were fighting. So they decided to create Le Mur de Toute la Connaissance. But in doing so, they decided why stop at simple world problems? Are not the issues of daily people just as important? Of course they are. That is how we find our half blooded fiends that are not a part of the Resistance. So the founders decided to include all those who live on this planet, from the newest born child to the oldest man in the farthest away place."

"That is interesting, High Master Keme," she responded quickly. "But how does the wall work?"

"Oh, that is easier to think than to explain," he creepily smirked. "You see, it is not very easy to create a timeline of a billion or so people at a time. As you may already know, names have a tendency to repeat. People change their names, people move around, nothing is consistent. So in an act of nothing but pure genius, the founding fathers managed to make their way into the spirit world.

"You see, each person is given a soul, as you already know. But what people don't know is that those souls are what keeps them attached to the spirit world. Once a person dies, their soul returns to the spirit world and they no longer have jurisdiction over their lives. But in order to guarantee their spot in the ultimate paradise, they must follow a certain goal of conduct. If the good outweighs the bad then of course they are allowed in. And of course if it doesn't then they perish for the rest of their eternal life. Now in order to determine if their souls can truly be accepted into the afterlife then they need to keep track, yes?"

"Of course," she responded quickly.

"So in order to keep track of everyone, their souls keep a note of every time they do something, whether they move, if they help someone take their groceries home, or even if they kill someone unjustly. Our founders discovered this about human souls and utilized it to their advantage. You see, each human soul is collected to the wall, marking down events of people and what decisions they make every day. And if a large event were to occur that affects many people, the wall registers this and files all victims or those affected under one placement. And if a person were to die, the wall registers this as a soul who will no longer make decision, so the name disappears forever, no longer making any notes of them and the things they may do."

"So," Kurogane frowned, "no one can change it? Like, what if the wall is wrong about something? Could someone go up to it and change it manually?"

"For someone who is clever, you certainly have stupid thoughts," Keme laughed rudely. "Were you not listening to what I said? The wall was designed so that no human interaction could affect it. If one were to manually change it then the wall would say so. There is no way around it! The wall is connected to the souls of every person. In fact, the only plausible way around the wall is if someone somehow managed to detach themselves from their souls, then only then can they probably sleuth around our world undetected, or if somehow you switched souls with someone, both of which are highly irrational, not to mention impossible. Even so, the wall would know and would tell us, so we would know what to look for." Kurogane hung her head to allow her face to fall without being seen. The wall was unstoppable. Defeat was impossible.

"Thank you sir," she said quietly. "That was very enlightening and I appreciate your time. I will take my files and study them first thing in the morning—"

"Well where do you think you are going?" he asked darkly, grabbing her roughly by the wrist.

"I was about to leave," she forced herself to say. "It is getting late and—"

"Oh no, you can't leave," he said much too close to her face.

"Sir, please—" she began, but suddenly she stopped, finding it impossible to breath.

"Now Miss Kurogane," he said with a weird calm as he was slowly suffocating her, "you asked me a question, a question that I have to say is very suspicious. Now you claim it is out of curiosity and I believe you but you can't simply expect me to just answer your question without so much as a consolation to my suspicions. If you were planning on doing something to our wall I would be so devastated if I found out you were without so much as threatening you if you did. Now a simple threat will not suffice for me since you can go through with it anyways if you so wish to chose. But if I were to punish you now for asking questions you should not be asking, then the lingering threat of a fate worse than death should keep you in check." Kurogane's face began to turn red as she struggled to breath. She tried to remain calm, as her training had always taught her, but a twinge of panic began to erupt in her lungs as her head suddenly began to get heavier.

"Sir," she attempted to mouth, and with her free hand, she tried to push him away, but he grabbed it quickly.

"Don't try and speak," he snarled, pulling her much too close to himself. "You'll need as much air as you can get."

'-'

Oh snap, he a jerk. NEHO, not much to say here, just go ahead and wait for another update. Don't know when that will be, probably sometime next week. I've actually sort of neglected my other writing, which is bad because I need to get a really big head start of it if I plan on finishing it by next year T-T. I also have my final on Monday, and then it's vacation time for me, assuming I can't get any classes for summer school. Darn you budget cuts. So you just hang tight for an update if you're looking forward to one. Oh, and I'm planning on getting another rat. For those who do not know (you probably don't) I use to have a rat. She was wonderful. Her name was Monkey Mouse (my dad's idea. I wanted to name her Hyroki, after the fat rat in my fanfiction, but she heard Monkey Mouse one too many times, so that was what she responded to.) She was a hairless rat, too, and she was really smart and nice, but she was a victim of inbreeding and passed away three months ago due to a tumor which caused her to become malnourished. It took me a while to get over it, but now I'm planning on getting a new rat! Hopefully one that won't die due to cancer, but we'll see what happens. If I do end up getting them, then I'll post pictures of them on my deviant art page. And as always, please review. Until next time, Signing Off!