A/N: My unit is fixing to deploy me, so updates are not to be expected for a while.
The Strangler had him dead to rights: the taller man had Lee from behind, long sinewy arms wrapped tight around his abdomen, heels hooked into the crotch, head tucked into his shoulder. Lee thrashed awkwardly, twisting and jerking, but Yuko knew his craft like no other. Panic mounted in Lee's guts as he realized that there was no escape.
He had been so damn cocky when the fight started. Emerging from the dark room with knife raised, he had thought to end the fight instantly, slashing at the silhuette's throat immediately. Yuko had jerked back at the last second, and the Tiger Tooth had merely sliced the taller man along the jawline. Lee had kept his momentum as he charged in, but gave only two more quick, ineffective cuts before Yuko the Strangler grabbed a wrist and tugged himself into Lee's personal space. Once that happened, it was just a matter of time before the fight hit the floor.
Lee tried to grab one of the fingers that linked together on his chest, but Yuko had them all tucked in tightly. He tried throwing his head back to break his opponent's nose, but Yuko's head was lowered too far. He tried to reach a forearm with his mouth to bite his way free, but couldn't bend that far. He tried to shift the heels digging into his thighs with brute arm strength, but Yuko's feet were well embedded.
He grunted a stream of feral curses as each ploy failed him.
Somewhere in the back of his mind a detached, bitter voice was saying, This isn't right. I'm Shenzi. I'm the killer ghost in the darkness. I'm not supposed to lose. This isn't how it goes.
Without any warning, the arms that were clinched across his chest melted away. Before Lee could process this development, a hand pressed his head to the side, exposing his throat for another powerful arm to snake across his windpipe. With the crook of his elbow across Lee's throat and a hand on the back of his head, Yuko the Strangler decided to live up to his name.
Lee sensed rather than felt his opponent's elbows close in to touch each other, and his breathing cut off.
He panicked.
The sky was aflame, raining fire, driving the darkness away in strings of orange and yellow. The heat washed across his face as each missile struck the ground. Crystallizing dirt and gouts of flame were flung skyward.
Hsu was on the ground not 30 yards from him, curled up in the fetal position. The skin on his arm was burned clear to the bone, and the sounds that were torn from Hsu's mouth would never have been thought human.
Lee couldn't move, couldn't fight. He couldn't tap out or escape. He couldn't even scream. His face started hurting from the blood backing up in it, and he was strangely aware that he must be turning red, though it was impossible to see this in the dark.
He had to keep attacking, otherwise he would die. The Earth Kingdom soldier's green tunic was shredded by a score of slashes and stained with blood. Each pause between the cuts and thrusts scared him. The corpse was ragged and shifted sickeningly with each blow, but Shenzi knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would tear his throat out unless he kept stabbing at it.
A splash of blood hit him directly in the eye, and he almost broke down and started crying then and there. But he couldn't afford to stop- not until the corpse was dead.
Bright white fire covered Lee's hands, swirling across the palms and flapping up onto the backs of his hands like company banners in high winds. He grabbed Yuko's arm with them and burned.
And when Yuko screamed and tore his maimed arm away, Lee twisted around like a mongoose and planted a burning hand directly into the pit of the stomach. He felt his palm sink a few inches through the flesh.
Yuko skittered across the floor, screaming in agony. Lee rolled to his feet, extinguished his fire, and dived for his knife. His mind seemed to be hollering at him as though he had forgotten something absolutely vital, but he put his mind on hold until he could kill the Strangler.
His fingers, now extinguished, curled around Tiger Tooth's hilt. He swept across the dark living area, sensing but ignoring the familiar odor of burnt human. He jabbed the knife into Yuko's neck. Blood splashed up into Lee's face.
Think, he told himself. Calm down and think.
I can't, he answered. Lee heard the response in his mind as a pitiful child's voice. I can't, there's something wrong and I can't fix it-
Thick blood slid down his cheek, stopping briefly at his jawline before dropping into his lap. He felt it attached to his eyelashes. He was sitting down on the rugs of the darkened room, hugging his knees and shaking. There was a burned, bloody body in front of him, and a knife next to him on the floor. Behind him in another room was a body hanging off of the wall, like some grisly hunting trophy.
I'm disoriented, that's all. Lots of stuff happened, and I'm still processing it. Soon, I'll be on my feet and solving problems again.
But instead he stayed on the floor, blood and tears streaking his face.
Something's wrong. You need to start thinking again, and soon. There's something wrong, and something bad will happen if you don't fix it.
What? he asked himself plaintively. Oh. The body is burned. Burned. By Firebending. I used Firebending, and I shouldn't have. Oh, shit.
He surged to his feet uncertainly. He had no solution, but he knew that he should get the front door to the apartment closed before doing anything else. Anyone could have heard the screams that Yuko made while he died. Lee stumbled down to his knees as he slammed the door shut. He leaned up against the door and started crying.
Lee had always enjoyed fighting. The stakes had never affected his genuine enthusiasm. His sparring matches with Hsu and the battles with the Earthbenders on the front lines had been equally invigorating. There was something about fighting that elevated him. It wasn't the violence he enjoyed- he derived no special pleasure by inflicting pain. It was winning he loved. Overpowering and outsmarting an opponent who was trying to do the same thing to him was his drug of choice.
There was nothing as glorious as beating someone who was trying to beat you.
This had been the first fight that Lee had not, on some level, enjoyed at all. Even on the Moki Lang, he had maintained a feral, animal pleasure in stalking his hunters and in overcoming the man with ropes on his arms.
Lee hated being a burnout. He loathed himself for his weakness, and he resented Yuko for making him feel this way. He might have slashed Yuko's body to ribbons out of sheer petulance, but he was smart enough to realized that he would feel even worse if he did.
Think. Think. You have got to think, guy.
Solution one: Escape the consequences. Grab the cash and split. To hell with Apple and Mahli and the job and this wondrous, murderous town. He had arrived with a knife and a bag of gold, and he was out nothing if he left the same way.
This struck him as being wise. It also struck him as unacceptable. He was no longer one hundred percent certain what the job was anymore, but he didn't want to leave before he solved it. And leaving Apple...
Solution two: Hide the evidence. If there's no body with burns on it, no one would suspect a Firebender.
Much better, he thought. See? You can still think.
How to ditch the stiff, though? There was a nice, deep, uninhabited canyon surrounding the city walls. It could be decades before anyone found a body thrown down there. But how to get Yuko through the city unnoticed? He couldn't exactly drag it around. And it was a long walk to the city walls...
Lee spat bitterly and shook the tears off his cheeks. The canyon might as well be on the dark side of the moon for all the good it would do him.
He then remembered the riddle that his old Jumpmaster had once posed to him. Kazuo had been stressing the importance of camouflage during Jump school. He had asked the class, "Where is the best place to hide a grain of sand?" The answer, of course, is the beach. Even if someone knew to look for it, it would be identical to its environment.
If literally everything in the apartment was burned in an accidental fire, a burned body wouldn't be at all suspicious.
Lee grabbed one of the paper lanterns off the wall and spilled its oil over the floor and walls.
Threads of fire began to stream rhythmically from his nostrils as he started to hyperventilate uncontrollably.
Two hours later, he arrived at the rendezvous point. It was a tea shop in the lower class entertainment district, called the Pale Lily. No one of affluence would deign to step through the roughly carved wooden doors. Its primary clientele was the Earthbenders who manned the delivery system. It was open twenty four hours a day, so as to avail itself to each shift as they got off, so there'd be enough of a crowd that two conspirators could link up without standing out.
Lee walked in the double doors gripping Tiger Tooth, expecting an ambush at any moment. All he knew of the job came from Apple. Little that he knew of the job was true. Therefore, it may well be that Apple was playing him. It sure as hell wouldn't be the first time she had.
He had considered not even showing up, but there remained the possibility that she was on the level and merely misinformed. In that case, he felt himself honor bound to stick with her and find Mahli.
"Where is she?" Apple demanded. The voice- crisp, stern, worried. Every note rang true. She had reallyexpected him to have the kid.
Of course, he knew first hand how much a convincing tone of voice meant.
"Wasn't there."
"What do you mean?"
"She wasn't there. The apartment was child free."
"Impossible," Apple hissed. Then her face went slack. Her eyes drifted up to the ceiling as she began talking to herself. "No. Nothing impossible. Merely improbable. Initial conclusions clearly flawed. Where did I go wrong? Can't say. All information indicates Mahli's presence in apartment. Either the data is insufficient or incomplete. You. Lee. Talk. Give me more to work with." Her gaze lowered till she was staring him in the eye.
Lee gaped. "Uh. Well, I breached through the wall as planned..." He described how Wang Tsu met his end, and the pile of gold and silver.
She sucked in a deep breath and held it, closing her eyes. "Dai Li."
"That's my read on it."
"Dai Li complicate everything. Assumption, to be proved or disproved: the Dai Li are behind Mahli's kidnapping, for reason of their own."
"What about the money? How does that figure in to it?"
"No way to know. Presumably, if the Dai Li were running this op, the cash flowed from them to the operators."
Apple drummed her fingertips loudly on the table top. "I can't stand being blind," she declared. "I'll need to see the apartment for myself. I might see something you didn't."
"You probably would have," Lee agreed. "Except now all you'd see is... charred ashes."
"What!"
"Yuko showed up as I was leaving the room. We fought and..."
"And what!"
"Well, I won. But we sorta knocked over the lantern and scorched the whole bloody room."
Apple snarled, "Unbelievable. You singlehandedly erased all evidence on the scene. Well done."
He shrugged. "Self defense."
"Did you catch that? 'Well done'? It was a play on words. Because you burned all my clues the same way that a chef might burn a steak. You... you clumsy, dumbass mercenary!"
"Yes, I am a mercenary. You hired me to do a job and I did it. I'm ever so god damned sorry that things didn't work out, but it wasn't my fault."
"In what possible way is this not your fault?"
Lee glared. "You gave me really bad intel. You told me Mahli would be there, and she wasn't! How about you bust my balls after you figure where she really is?"
Apple sank back in her chair and rubbed her forehead. "Alright. Fair play. Our operation failed. I bitched you out, and you bitched me out. Are we still determined to find the girl?"
"I'm still onboard. What's the next move?" That was quick, he thought.
Apple frowned thoughtfully. "If the Dai Li are up to something, then Lord Fo Ran is our best bet to find out what. He's the senior intelligence officer of Omashu, answers only to Mad King Bumi. If nothing else, he can get us in contact with an actual Dai Li agent."
"Alright. Sounds good." Would she be acting this way if she was double crossing him? He doubted it. Lee knew she was a fantastic liar, but everything sounded convincing. He wasn't sure if the fact that she sounded honest was a point in her favor or not.
