Yin breathed slowly to steady his nerves. At least now he knew what had happened to Ensign Xai.
He stood in the vast puddle that dampened what was left of the room, empty except for the crumpled body in the centre. He couldn't spare the manpower to give the man a decent sending off, but at the very least he made an effort to lean down and lay him out in a way that gave him some dignity in death. As he pulled a limp arm over, a scroll splatted onto the floor. The first officer paused, but continued to lay Xai's body straight with arms crossed across his chest, which would do until a funeral pyre could be arranged. It was customary for a sailor's ashes to be flung into the sea. Yin wasn't sure that was what Xai wanted, but he didn't have the luxury of time to check.
Yin stood up and walked around the crewman's body, leaning down to pick up the dripping scroll. Inspecting it, a lot of the names were smudged. All the information he could gleam from the blotches that used to be calligraphy that applied to this room were the words 'two passengers unaccounted for'. The names given were indecipherable. The crewman was carrying out the Captain's headcount and eminently surprised someone. Maybe even the ones behind this.
Yin looked around the room, open to the elements now there was a massive hole in it, cooling rapidly from being in the shade as the sun drew down on the other side. There was no maybe about it. Xai's death was senseless, but if the records for the room revealed anything, then maybe it wouldn't have been in vain. If he could find out who was behind all this, he could put a stop to it. If he just knew where they were...
Aang was getting tired of being unconscious. It was getting old hat by now. The slow, gradual phasing in of tactile sensation was a familiar and exhausting ritual, letting the sounds of clanking and spitting, the smell of oil and salt, the touch of grime and iron, the sense of up and down, and the taste of dust and grit drift into consciousness. Sight was harder to grasp, and Aang was wondering if he was losing his vision or if the world really was this dark. What disappointed him the most was that the first thing he saw wasn't Katara's smile...his first physical feeling was the shiver running down his spine when he saw the thing that was smiling before him. The first thing he saw had an empty, almost kindly grin, a face as pale as a full moon and glistening with wetness, a mop of messy hair and a massive bulging vein across his forehead. Five others stood behind him, the same expressions, the same half-dragging stances, the same emptiness. The dolls that used to be children stared at him in what looked like enraptured fascination.
Nandi looked straight through him, and giggled.
"Wh...what are you..." Aang managed to squeeze out of his vocal chords. The others joined in the giggling, and the echo they made prompted Aang to look up at where he was...inside a massive chamber, vaulted high above like a temple, long and narrow as the walls tapered down to the floor, every square inch filled with one contraption or another. It was full of machinery, but in a distant sort of way. There was no frenetic activity here...only a kind of deadness. A dark, dreary absence of life, permeated through by the glistening of steel surfaces and random bulbous objects that could only be seen through shadow. He tugged at his hands, tied behind a pillar of piping with thin wire, raised above the ground thanks to the other round of wire tied around his bare ankles. Even if he could try to squeeze his way out of his restraints, he wasn't too eager to try.
And they wouldn't stop giggling.
"Stop it!" Aang snapped, as the constant convulsions of sound were freaking him out beyond all reason. Nandi slowly stopped giggling.
"That's right, Avatar. Tell us to stop," Nandi spoke distantly, "tell our mothers and fathers to stop. You wouldn't dare tell they who murdered our brothers and sisters to stop. We told them stop. We screamed at them to stop. But they didn't listen to us. So we're not gonna listen to you."
The giggling carried along, more quietly, but always present. Aang was still not entirely awake, and walking into obvious pitfalls, asking "how did you know I'm the Avatar?"
"Spirits don't know lies," Nandi revealed, "the family watches all of us. They can feel the blood that pumps through your veins. They saw through us, saw the agony of the world spirit, and knew you were here. They've all come to see the end of the one who betrayed the Shachihoko."
"Betrayed the..." Aang mouthed, "I'd never betray anyone!"
"Our cousins would call you a fibber if they weren't squished under foundation stones," Niu counter-argued.
"You promised our mothers and fathers," Bao joined in, "hundreds of years ago, you promised you would protect the sanctity of our home. The safety of their young. 'From the ravages of mankind', you promised. You didn't mean it. You lied to us."
"But that was in a past life!" Aang defended, "gimme a break! I barely knew you people existed until today. You were...I...I got so many things to do! Hundred year wars! Comet! And I can't bend anymore! Just...so many things. So...I'm sorry I wasn't there to help you. But I didn't know! I'm sorry!"
"The Avatar says he's sorry even when he means nothing," Ju added, a slender trace of bitterness caught in the undercurrent, "dumb excuses. Skipping round the truth. He could've stopped it long ago, but didn't."
"But y'know..." Tai revealed some unexpected wisdom, "these humans don't see time the way we do. They can't see beyond themselves. Their spirits are trapped and cold. He couldn't've known of us, or his promise."
"But he's not just a human," Ya slyly pointed out. Aang was getting desperate enough to begin trying to slip out of his restraints. It was futile, but he just wanted to get away from these things...and the uncomfortable truth they brought. Ya explained, "he's the Avatar. The one who crossed the divide, who knew what it meant to be nature, beyond what little men can do. But he didn't wanna. It was his choice, and he made it again and again, putting himself before the planet. Only when his selfishness brings him to death and back does he realise the spirit's there. Only when his spirit faces obliteration does he wanna take care of it. We can't forgive his betrayal. He ain't worthy to be the kind of thing he is."
"It's not our place to judge," Nandi said simply. Their gazes remained fixed, passing straight through Aang's head, "our elders will judge him, and everyone else."
Aang ceased his efforts to escape, which brought him only sore wrists and terrified restlessness. He tried to reason with them, "but they're innocent! You can't condemn them like this!"
"They travel on iron and coal, ripped from the earth and blackening the water, and you call them innocent?" Niu argued, "humans upset the balance just by existing."
"Still, we wanna be realistic," Nandi interjected, "our new family can't hope to take on the entire human race. You've already won, as good as. All we want is what you took from us."
"You took our brothers and sisters," Bao spoke in turn, "so our new mothers and fathers will have us to take their place."
"It's only fair," Ju contributed.
"That's crazy!" Aang shouted at the lot of them, stretching forward to get closer to them, "you can't just take someone else's kids when you lose your own! You're not even real children! You're just puppets! Replacements! That's no way to treat a kid!You've already suffered! Why make others suffer for someone else's mistakes!?"
"You call it a 'mistake' when we're condemned to die out to make journeys for you people an ickle shorter?" Nandi elaborated, "d'you know what it feels like to know you have no future?"
Aang looked in desperation at the children. No change of expression so much as flickered in their faces. He thought of Nandi's words, and looked down sadly at the thought of what he left behind, "yes...yes I do."
"So how do you feel?" Nandi probed.
Aang looked up slightly to remember, back when he first learnt the truth in the Southern Air Temple, "...hurt. Angry. Shame. Guilt. I miss them all. But...I think I've come to terms with it. I've found a new family, and I know what I have to do to set things right. I know they're not coming back. I've accepted that much. Something else will take their place eventually, but it won't be the same. There won't be any more Air Nomads."
The children were silent. Listening intently to the Avatar's words. Nandi spoke, "you know loss, Avatar, and so do we. We've found a new family too, and we know how to set things right, too. But we can't accept our extinction. We can't let something else take our place. That's our difference, Avatar. We don't give up."
"I don't give up..." Aang muttered angrily. He was becoming aware of a growing exhaustion creeping in around the edges of his consciousness. Different from the grogginess of waking up earlier. This exhaustion had weight and momentum. It grew on him, a bit at a time, "I didn't give up! I haven't run away! You're the ones running away! You can't make things the way they were! The world doesn't work that way."
"You? Know how the world works?" Nandi scorned.
"Things change. Nothing ever stays the same," Aang spoke mournfully, "but we can protect what we have! Just making more destruction hurts everyone, including yourselves."
"Why didn't you protect us?" Nandi asked. Aang strained against his restraints again.
"Because I couldn't!" Aang protested, "I told you! I can't bend anymore! I need to learn Firebending to help me get my Avatar powers back!"
"Powers..." the childish giggling increased in crescendo, before dying down. It never went away. Nandi decided "that just goes to show...you really are unworthy of being the divine medium. If y'think of your spirit...your very self...as just a collection of powers. Your spirit's tired, Avatar. Exhausted from just existing. Trapped in its shell for millennia, it longs for non-existence, for the joy of merging with the rest of life."
"I...don't know...what you're talking about..." Aang strained harder against the wire, depleting his energy in the effort.
"You do know. You've felt it for a while," Nandi explained, "we can sense it, because deep down we're the same, Avatar. Spirits in mortal form. We're both weak, but the Shachihoko won't just roll over. We're more important than anyone wants to know, and we'll survive, using the humans who don't feel like using us any longer. But you, Avatar, don't serve a purpose anymore. Your job was to protect the balance. You gave up that job, and now you, and all of us, have paid the price. The balance is gone. You, Avatar, will go with it. We'll finish what the world-ender started, even if she finishes us."
Aang slumped forward, exhausted from his efforts to escape. The children walked away from the pipe Aang was tied to, each of them picking up a sledgehammer laid carefully against the hull. The sledgehammers were of a weight that should have been near impossible for the kids to wield, but those kinds of considerations were fast vanishing from his fuzzy, blurry mind. He recalled a word Nandi said, "...world-ender...?"
"To the spirits, past and future are just words. We know who was the death of you, and she'll be the death of everything," Nandi stepped back, and the other children walked up to the sides of the hull, "but she's made our job easier. It's less trouble to kill someone who's already dead."
Ju raised a sledgehammer and gleefully piled it into the hull. The force made a huge indentation, which soon spurted seawater into the metal cavern. The sledgehammer disintegrated from the force of the impact. Nandi smiled more widely, "kinda ironic really, being killed by people that're already dead."
Bao piledrived his own sledgehammer, bringing forth another plume of water. Aang could feel cool mist against his skin, but it still felt distant and unreal, somehow. Nandi shrugged, "well...it would be ironic, 'cept we're not gonna be the ones doing it. It's not our place to judge, y'see."
Niu and Tai punctured their own holes in the sides, and a vast puddle began to pool at the bottom of the Gang Shen. Nandi grinned honestly, hand on hip, looking playful as he explained, "after all, we weren't there when our home was bulldozed. And anyway, we got stuff to do, so we'll just leave it to the grown-ups."
Aang blinked slowly, thought processes slowing down precipitously. He felt completely impotent, barely able to ask real questions. All he could do was sway slightly and ask, "...grown-ups?" He didn't jump as he witnessed Ya taking another chunk out of the keel.
Nandi giggled playfully, a convulsive display that dissipated soon after, "you'll be meeting them soon."
The other kids had stopped to look. Aang looked down, thinking of how many people...the entire world...he was failing at that moment. These things had a grievance, and they wouldn't listen to better ways to deal with it. What better ways were there? What could you do when your race had been wiped out? Aang thought he was doing the right thing...he was sure of it...but if it weren't for him, so many people would still be alive. These creatures would have had a home and young to look after. It was his fault. What reasons he'd held to comfort himself that it really wasn't, that things were supposed to be this way, melted under pressure.
Aang broke down. He slumped even more in his restraints and screwed his eyes shut to stop the tears from flowing. Nothing he did made a difference. He was just one kid. What could he do? What more could he do to satisfy these things? To stop them from killing? If he gave himself up, would they leave his friends alone? That wouldn't be enough for them. He sniffed, stopping himself from sobbing. He couldn't think of a way to stop them. He was responsible, but he couldn't fix it. He couldn't fix anything. So why did he have to be down here? What more could he do? His breath strangled itself, the darkness encroached from the edges, and he pleaded, quietly, "...what do you want from me..."
Nandi's smile faded, and he looked almost sympathetic, "that's for our mothers and fathers to decide. If you're smart, you might just figure out what they're gonna say, and save them the trouble."
Nandi turned his back and walked away from Aang, leaving him tied at the bottom of the ship, with water gushing in from both sides. It would take an age for it to fill up at this rate, but the Shachihoko were patient in their vengeance. Ridding the world of the Avatar, the great betrayer, forever. That was something to savour.
Aang sobbed softly, barely able to put any effort into that. He couldn't handle it anymore, the pressures and the guilt and the great effort of being the Avatar. He could feel it, the weight of millennia pressed into his slight young body. Now the millennia were bundled up with him, weakened and fragmented and diminished. Nandi was right, he no longer had any use. He was useless as he was, but even as a full Avatar he couldn't stop things from falling apart. The balance was beyond repair. If Azula was the world-ender...and he wouldn't have been surprised...it was just making certain what was probable anyway. The world was ending, and he could feel it dying all around him.
It was an auspicious place. Here at the bottom of the God of Steel, the works of nature flowing in to bring the works of man down with them. The metal cavern was filled with the sounds of echoing splashes, the coldness of the Mo Ce Sea enveloping the coldness of iron. The room was dark, and getting darker. Aang didn't want to be here anymore, this cold, dark, wet harbinger of the future. He had no place in it. He wasn't anything here. Was what Nandi said true? About being trapped in his body? Endlessly reincarnating and being cut off from the rest of life? If he was trapped, and cold, and useless...the thought of being with the rest of life sounded very attractive. His sobs quietened as he reflected on it, on being somewhere else, where he was no longer alone, no longer encumbered by the effort of being himself over the course of centuries.
The laughter came again, not the childish giggling of the children, but the genuinely happy laughter of a life that was complete and total. He went forward to meet it, and his crying ceased entirely. His body slackened against the restraints, and darkness overcame him once more.
The sun was beginning to skim the mountain horizon. It would continue doing so for some time, in the long summer days, but Azula was treading steps down to a place where day and night held no meaning. She'd left the Royal Guard to stand to attention with nothing except the stunning imagery of the highlands of Nagaoka Prefecture to keep them company. Questions of their well-being never crossed her mind. The Royal Guards were practically mandated by divine convention to not get tired.
The air above her head was filled with starry dust, illuminated by the sunlight pouring through into the stairway. Azula walked down into the cellar, already ensconced in darkness, stopping just short of a large metal door. The cellar was originally intended for storing wine, a valuable commodity that came mostly from the Earth Kingdom, but it fell into disuse as the realisation crept in that the Princess for whom the retreat was built had scant little interest in intoxicants of any sort, no matter how mild or sociable. She'd kept it aside in anticipation of other possible uses, and conveniently enough one had just appeared.
She had ordered the door locked, so she rapped it firmly and stepped back. The door didn't budge. She waited for a few patient seconds but no sign of activity came forth. She coughed loudly. A second later the door flung over and a Dai Li agent bowed reverentially as she passed. She paid him no attention whatsoever. The cellar's various chambers had been refitted with imposing stone doors, and a long corridor had effectively formed as a result. The Fire Princess spotted another Dai Li running ahead of her to some other part of this ad hoc complex.
"Apologies, Your Majesty," the bowed Dai Li agent expressed, "we will inform Long Feng of your arrival immediately."
"Apologies are pointless without corrective action. Make sure that doesn't happen again," Azula said distractedly. The corridors were lit with gem stones...Azula made a mental note of finding out where Long Feng got them...which gave the place an ethereal green glow. She found her way around easily enough, so that by the time Long Feng rushed out to meet her she was already almost outside the main 'office'. The Grand Secretary made a short respectful bow.
"The equipment has arrived and been assembled, Your Majesty," Long Feng recognised what the Fire Princess wanted to hear, "we have adapted it as per your instructions, for use in metal environments, and it can be moved elsewhere at very short notice. I trust this meets your expectations?"
Azula was only half-interested in Long Feng's words, and turned back at the now-shut entrance door to ask, "do you have a system in place for determining security access that I'm not aware of?"
"Ah yes," Long Feng explained, "apart from a handful of important dignitaries...yourself included...the Dai Li use a complicated system of phrases and passcodes to identify their security level. Prospective agents in training learn it by rote from an early age and it forms an important part of their upbri-"
"Find a better system," Azula interrupted. She'd always found security measures like passcodes, secret handshakes and special doorknocks to be inane and childish, and made her attitude towards such clique-like indulgences incredibly clear. She explained, "you might find it easier to hide something important by keeping it in plain sight."
Long Feng had run his operation for a good portion of his life, and didn't take very well to being lectured to about his own profession. Sensibly enough, he kept much of this opinion to himself, although one particular instance of hypocrisy stood out like a sore thumb, "Base 77 is hardly in plain sight..."
Rather than enact Long Feng's immediate and unconditional execution by searing blue fire, Azula just smiled like a cat taking its time admiring the juicy catch flailing wildly between her claws. The Fire Princess cocked a shining bronze eye at Long Feng, "maybe I don't want to hide it."
Long Feng fell back from the glare, wisely keeping his distance from the Fire Lord's favourite child. He collected himself with a cough and asked politely, "you told us we might be expecting visitors?"
"Make that a definite," Azula clarified, "one visitor, to be precise. I think it's high time you showed me a reason to be impressed with your little organisation."
"Indeed," Long Feng smiled. No matter what her opinion on doorknocks and handshakes, he was fully preparing to pull out all the stops to show the Fire Princess what his people were capable of. He stretched an arm out to the nearest door, "this way to the Observation Room, Your Majesty. My men will show the 'guest' to the Re-education Room when they arrive."
Azula stepped first into the dark room, with no gemstones in the walls here. The light meekly crawling in from the door was the only illumination the room was getting. It was largely bare except for a series of shelves earthbended into the wall, inside which were trunks of various shapes and sizes, half of them opened, filled to the brim with scrolls. Some were strewn across a small stone table jutting out from the wall. Across the wall to the right of the door was a long, thin slit that connected to the room on the other side, presumably the 'Re-education Room'.
Azula walked over and picked up a random scroll from one of the trunks. Unrolling it, she found herself reading the closest, most personal details imaginable of some person she'd never met before. There were professional observations, personal testimonies and even small sketches strung together in the scroll...a picture of someone's entire life. Azula smiled knowingly. She had hit upon a treasure trove when she discovered the Dai Li, a missing link in her investigations of what made human beings tick: the contents of their minds. She was capable of reducing people to nervous wrecks by turning their weaknesses against themselves, that was true, but now she had no need to. She had an army of people to do that for her, diligent enough to record every insignificant step on the way.
She'd seen signs of that in Colonel Yuung's preliminary report, which she'd read thoroughly as her own personal homework. He'd tortured a frog to death when he was seven, and felt so guilt-ridden about it that he'd risked his neck stealing a frog from a local noble's private pond just to replace it. A gardener was blamed for losing the landlord's prized frog, and ended up being evicted from his home along with his family for raising the lord's ire. Yuung never owned up to it. The Dai Li were the first people to discover this nugget of information. This stuff was more valuable than platinum.
She placed the scroll back in the trunk, and guessed that they were organised in phonetic order. She was pleased that Long Feng had taken it upon himself to bring this material with him to her retreat. She might just curl up to sleep with this stuff. It had a purpose, at the end. Once she identified the weaknesses, she could begin to figure out how to eliminate them once and for all. Long Feng held some delight in how well Azula was taking to this plethora of information. That was, after all, part of the reason for bringing it here, besides practicalities. He voiced aloud, "these are records of some of our more recent cases. We have a warehouse full of similar records in Ba Sing Se. I thought that you'd like to hand-pick a few specific types of cases to bring to Pingfang Bay. We're organising transport as we speak, Your Majesty."
Azula leaned back against the shelves, smiling deliciously, "you'll find I'm slightly harder to impress than you think, Grand Secretary...slightly harder." She could hear a small commotion from the door, and could tell immediately what two people would make that kind of disturbance, and stood upright away from the shelves, "let's see how you go about acquiring this information in the first place."
Long Feng turned to pay attention to the minor racket going on outside, and walked across the room to shut the door, leaving only a small strip of light emanating weakly from the Re-education Room. It was towards this slit that Long Feng walked, "they should be arriving any moment. If you'd care to observe, Your Majesty."
Azula walked silently over to the slit and peered through. She could just about make the outline of a chair and a large circle ringing around in front of it. The chair was set on rails so it could move elsewhere around the room, and to either side of it were various instruments, ostensibly for use in whatever technique the Dai Li used. The door grew more ajar, and dark shapes emerged inside, dragging something heavy in. On closer inspection, the two dark shapes most prominent were actually alternately a dark crimson and a dark pink.
"Man, he's heavy! How can he move all this weight, honestly?" Ty Lee nattered, "you know what would be good for him? A fresh new fitness regime! It'd do him a world of good. His heart must be palpating from moving all this muscle around. He'd be much better as a fitter, leaner guy. I mean, big, bulging muscles might be cool if you're a guy, but I dunno. They're just really gross to me..."
"Please, give me a reason to drop him on you..." Mai groaned, pulling the weight up and onto the chair. It was easy enough, if just really tedious.
"How did you girls fare?" Azula asked through the slit, amused by how much they got on each others' nerves. A couple of Dai Li moved in to secure the lumpen mass on the chair, snapping metal cuffs around his hands, feet, chest, abdomen and forehead. The body groaned.
"I got him in the neck and Mai finished him off with a dart," Ty Lee reported perkily, "went down like a log. You've no idea how cute he is when he's sleeping!"
"Big snoring oxen are not cute," Mai said in a deadpan tone, "saying that they are really loudly does not make them so."
"We'll take it from here, Your Majesty," Long Feng leaned aside to inform Azula.
"You girls get some rest," Azula ordered, "you might just have to take him back later tonight."
The girls nodded affirmatively and made their exit from the room. As the door shut, all light was cut off, and the Fire Princess, the Grand Secretary and their captive experiment were plunged into darkness. None of them could really see a thing, just when the prisoner was gradually coming into a position to do so. The captive groaned groggily, and the others waited patiently for him to wake up.
They didn't have to wait long. The prisoner coughed and hacked as he got the last of the poison out of his system, and moved to rub his head, only to be stalled by the metal brackets around his arms. Some struggling later, and the bewildered captive was getting more and more panic-stricken. Angrily, he tore at the chair to little avail, snorting loudly and cursing his condition. He couldn't look around at the complete blackness, but the feel of metal against his limbs proved he was awake and somewhere physical.
He breathed quickly, teeth gritted, growing to realise that he wasn't alone. There were things cloaked in the shadows, not revealing themselves. Confused and angry, he challenged aloud, "wh...what is this? Where am I? Where've you taken me!? Who are you!? Show yourselves! You..." He gulped down and concentrated, channelling his anger at the dark space before him, "what're you gonna do to me?"
"Don't worry," a calm and reassuring voice spoke to the prisoner soothingly, "you are safe now."
An orange glow lit up and began travelling around the room regularly. Colonel Mongke smouldered and glared at the neutral, stable face of the Dai Li agent in front of him. Darkness and light danced around, and the Dai Li was the only stable element around for the Fire Nation soldier to fix his eyes on. He couldn't see anything beyond. Not even the pair of bronze eyes glinting with every sweep of the orange light.
To Be Continued…
Avatar: The Last Airbender Concept and Characters © Nickelodeon 2005-06
Author's Note: Most of the effort on this chapter went into getting the Nandi-led bits right. And I still don't think I've got it. The Azula segment was achieved in one go, and I think it's far better material. Things will be beginning to wrap up from the next part onwards as everything's set up for the final showdown aboard the Gang Shen.