Another bit of a wait has yielded another chapter. This is a filler and so will be the next one. After those...a couple of fluff chapters to keep you readers coming back for more. And hopefully a few more favs and reviews (Hint Hint).
Chapter 46: The Enemy of My Enemy
The walk back to the ship turned out to be rather pleasant to Patramanov and Zo. Seeing that they were to be stuck with each other until told otherwise, they opened up more about themselves to each other as they reached the port and boarded the ship. They were in the mist of telling each other how to pronounce their names properly while Zo checked in and was given the key to a very small one person cabin near the cabin of the others in her now apparent spy group.
Alexi, as he told her to call him instead of only using his last name, proved to be gentleman and offered to escort her to her cabin. When they reached it she entered alone and he went back to the cabin he shared with the two love struck teens. The door was closed and he didn't hear anything. Being a concerned adult, he knocked on the door. "Mal!, you better not be doing the Tree Line Two Step with Kay in there!" There was no answer so he covered his eyes as he opened the door.
He was prepared to find the two of them on one of the bunks in some compromising position, but he slowly opened his eyes to find the two of them in no such state. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw them. They were indeed on the same bunk, but both of them were sleeping soundly in each other's arms...fully clothed. The bunk was still made and it appeared that the two of them had decided to just take a nap right on top of the bunk. Nothing bad had happened since he left them practicing waterbending a how or so ago.
His sighing wasn't loud at all, but the change in the air pressure suddenly woke the Avatar in the room. He looked over from the bunk to see Alexi staring at him as Katara continued to sleep quietly in his arms. He friend mouthed something to him which he lip read as him saying, "Did you two..." Which he looked back down at Katara still sleeping and understood what the man was asking. Which he answered back by shaking his head...NO! His action of shaking his head doing awoke Katara.
Seeing who was standing next to their bunk, Katara freaked out, "We didn't do anything! I Swear. Please don't tell my parents!" She begged the man as she kicked herself off of Tal and onto the bed's edge.
"Relax kiddo," he told her. "I didn't see anything. Besides...I just found out your parents had not been telling us everything they should be telling us."
"Like what." Tal asked his friend.
"Like the fact that Katara's mom her had an old friend who is a Kyoshi Warrior. And that this friend, Zo...just so happens to be asked to help a group get the Swamp Region independence." With that almost serving as an introduction, there was a knock on the cabin door.
Alexi went over and opened it to reveal Zo standing there. "So...the kids are being good?" She joked to him as she stepped inside the now crowded cabin. She walked over to the two teens and introduced herself with a slight polite bow. "Zo of the Kyoshi Warriors, at your service."
"Zo?" Katara asked herself out loud as she tried to remember why the name sounded so familiar to her. "Wait...you trained with my mom. She's told me a bit about you, how you managed to kick butt in nonbending fights even though you were only seven or so."
"Well.." Zo said as she took a seat at the one small table that came with the cabin. "Most of those fights were against boys who thought that just because they were boys meant they could be a girl." She let out a small giggle. "Obviously they never heard that Kyoshi Warriors are all women and can kick butt easily."
"Then it's a good thing she is on our side then." Alexi said as he took a seat at the table too...right next to Zo. "She nearly killed me earlier when I went out to explore the island. She caught me trying to get a peek at how they train." This got another laugh out of Zo.
What was in the end surprising, was that Korra had written to Zo months before and had asked her to help with the group. The plan was to have the three-now-four of them enter Foggy Bottom as poor immigrants fleeing persecution from Republic City. This would allow them to bypass the United Republic Navy's blockade of the region. The rules of war allowed for civilian ships to transverse the sea without the threat of attack. And when the ship did finally enter the port of Foggy Bottom, the four of them managed to get through customs without a single issue.
Now having safely entered the city of Foggy Bottom, they managed to rent out a small three bedroom apartment in the poor district. It was still nicely furnished though and near a tea shop that Katara..or really Kay..had applied for a job at the next day along with Zo. The shop needed waitresses badly and were quite happy to add two lovely ladies to their staff.
As for Tal and Alexi..they managed to land Mal and Al jobs at a lumberyard just down the road a bit. Their previous experience from living up in the northern region and having done logging jobs back when they were younger made then the perfect candidates for the job.
With jobs in hand to help pay for shelter and food, their evenings were spent occasionally relaxing at the teashop, or better yet...finding who here did not like the Earth Kingdom. Their answer came a few weeks later when Tal caught a person trying to break into the very yard he worked. The disguised Avatar was in the middle of patrolling the neighborhood via the rooftops looking for anyone who was still out in the middle of the night. He was dressed in his uniform of The Spirits.
The man he caught, was one of his very one coworkers, a nonbender who was planning to torch the one warehouse containing the best lumber the yard had...the wood destined for Ba Sing Se. Little did the man know, that an Avatar had been following him. The resulting fight..which had a lot of chi blocking from both sides...was quick and ended with Tal easily trapping the man in a cone of earthbended stone.
When he managed to radio in for the others to come, they arrived just as the man began to stop resisting. Tal had to gag the man to prevent him from screaming. Alexi was dressed in his own set of Spirit's gear. The girls showed up also, dressed in robes that were more like those of the Kyoshi Warriors only without the headdresses or face paint, but still with cloth masks over their faces. When asked if he was a loyalist of the Earth King, he shook his head in disgust...he wasn't. Seeing that he could be a potential ally, they told him that they were there to help the region break apart from the Earth Kingdom. He then finally calmed down and they removed the gag to let him talk.
Now being free to talk, and no longer restrained, the man...who was named Rook...was much better behaved as he explained to them that he and few dozen citizens from the town were part of a underground group. They all had seen that the region was being oppressed by the Earth King and his system of taxation. The people of the swamp, although not violently oppressed like those in Ba Sing Se, they were much more economically burdened than other regions.
There was just one little issue however. The group had formed years earlier after the seeing how nonbenders were taxed even more than the already poor benders of the swamp. This group had once in fact been aligned...with the Equalists. It was the matter of a few more minutes of harsh questioning before Rook finally was able to explain himself.
The Equalists and their cause were now almost dead for good now. This one cell of agents did not participate in the attack on the arena. When word reach them of its failure, they had instructions to hide until a new leader made themselves known. This never happened as nobody knew in The Doctor was dead or not. Also, this one cell seemed to have been having an identity issue lately. They saw that bending wasn't their real enemy, it was the Earth King and his Dai Li agents he sent to enforce his power, both benders and nonbenders alike.
Seeing that they should expand their membership to include anyone who hated the Earth King, the group grew from a dozen or so to about 50 in the span of a few months. Many others would have joined if it wasn't for the public decrees by local Dai Li agents that whoever is caught with such a group faced a grim fate. Some still stayed, some others still joined, they just hoped that their efforts would not go un noticed by the rest of the world. They managed to get a message out to Councilman Wo Han via letters from a local Equa-Tech factory. This lead to later being met by the men Tal sent.
The four men he had sent that night, were all busy trying to slow down the progress of a road the Earth Kingdom army was building as a way to reach the swamp from Ba Sing Se. It was essentially just like how Tal and his own separate group held back the enemy at Wolfbat Pass. This time, the swamp was the nearly impenetrable object and they just had to keep slowing down the construction of the road. No road meant no troops from the Earth Kingdom could reach Foggy Bottom by land. The United Republic's navy cut off any route by sea, and the Earth Kingdom did not have the airpower necessary to move large amounts of troops and tanks.
Rook belonged to a group who Tal's men had reported to him about. They were supposed to be recruiting and training agents to join The Spirits, but the approaching Earth Kingdom troops on that road threw a wrench into that plan. This left Tal with a town of possible agents. Over the next week, he could see that many were just too scared to join The Spirits.
It was all because of the local Dai Li agents in the town. Katara noticed it when she was working one morning in the tea shop with Zo. A Dai Li agent came in and told the owner to pay some new taxes...all going to the new road to Ba Sing Se. The owner, never having to pay this new tax protested. The agent then grabbed him and smashed his face against the shop's counter. He relented and paid the money, and then was forced to pay more for wasting the agent's time. Katara wanted to fight right there, but Zo stopped her before the agent noticed them.
While Katara used her waterbending to heal the owner's broken nose and black eye in the back of the shop, Zo kept watch up front to make sure that the agent did not return with some of his friends. The Kyoshi Warrior knew she could beat a single Dai Li, but facing multiple ones would not end well for her.
As for Tal and Alexi, the two of them kept working at the lumberyard, slowing making the rounds with Rook who introduced them to other members of the group, and a few of those still on the fence. Tal used his fake name of Mal at all times during such meetings, no one could know that he was the Avatar. The only hint he gave to help bring people to his side was that he was "able to contact Avatar Tal, and he was said to be on his way to help." This little white lie worked quite well, a dozen new members joined The Spirits within the week. Tal also used a semi-fictitious story about how he was once a Equalist too, and how he could see that they were now all but gone, and should now fight for real "Equality".
The newcomers could see that this meant they needed to get rid of the Dai Li agents. This was more easily said than done. The Dai Li were master earthbenders and now were also experts at chi-blocking. These former Equalists were not the well trained agents who attacked the arena almost a year before...they were really nothing more than average in skill. Still a threat to a untrained victim, but easy pickings for a Dai Li.
The next step in the plan was apparent...they needed to train their new allies...and they needed to do it quickly. A week had passed of nightly training segments when Katara overheard word of the new road now being only twenty miles or so away from town. Once it reached the town, the Earth Kingdom military would occupy the town and help the Dai Li keep the people in check, and the region would be lost.
Tal, did not help with training. He had spent every night going by rooftops across the town to find any Dai Li agent who was out at night. His prey walked barefoot to sense approaching enemies, but Tal avoided this by using trees and wooded roofs to deafen the effect. It always worked. He would surprise his prey and pounce onto them like a wolfowl attacked its next meal. The Dai Li would either be knocked out right there or a small fight would occur, where Tal's bending or his prior Equalist training helped him get the upper hand.
When the fight was over, he would drag the now unconscious and bound body to a hidden spot and one of the new members of The Spirits would come quickly to drag it to their new dungeon they made in the basement of one of the old warehouses in the town's port. There, the captured Dai Li agents would wake up in a wooden jail cell...bounded, gagged, and under constant watch.
This routine of Dai Li going missing did not go unnoticed. Their fellow agents began to soon walk around town in pairs. Soon, Tal's attacks began also happening in plain daylight. If anyone say them, all they saw was a being dressed in all black with a skull mask over their face. This happened a lot, during a week that Tal and Alexi had off from the lumberyard. Posters showing the Dai Li or the Earth King were now also having skulls painted over their faces. The words Freedom Now!-THE SPIRITS! Or even better...THE SPIRITS ARE REAL!
Soon, the fall storms arrived in the swamp region, and construction of the road had to be halted due to flooding. This bought them time. The original members of The Spirits who had first trained with Tal soon returned and helped in training or with more attacks on Dai Li. As for those who had been building the road, they hiked the rest of the way to town via a small trail. Only ground troops could make it through...but only a small trickle. They too were soon being attacked and taken prisoner by Tal's Spirits.
Although they were enemies, those captured were fed well and given enough water to survive. This allowed for some of the newly captured soldiers to begin freely giving up intel on the morale of the Earth Kingdom military, or on the people back in Ba Sing Se. The Dai Li refused to give up anything but they were still treaty fairly as prisoners of war.
According to the soldier who were captured, the army was at its breaking point. Food was becoming scarce and now they had to hunt the creatures of the swamp for food. The water was bad and many were sick, some even died. Supplies for Ba Sing Se could only come in by truck and it was very limited. The United Republic's Air Force had daily strafing runs that launched rockets, destroying more supplies or damaged parts of the road...especially bridges. Even the indigenous swamp people got in on the act and raided camps often for supplies. This and the attacks by The Spirits made construction crawl on at a snail's pace...a dozen meters or so a day.
Miles away, at the Earth Kingdom's nearest military camp, the general of the region's army was having a rather bad day. He stood at attention in from of the desk of his supposed equal. He knew that in fact, this man who sat behind the desk really has the power in the military. This was rather upsetting to the general...this man wasn't even part of the military. He was a Dai Li agent. Those who tried to flee were captured and executed, by order of the army's Dai Li representative...The Commissar...the one who held true power. Most of the men now only fought because they were more scared of the Dai Li then they were of anything else.
As for the general. he was having his rear end chewed out by this Commissar for what had happened earlier today. More reports of soldiers and Dai Li agents disappearing in the town again. The natives also has done another raid on the camp's supply depot. There was no attack by this rebel band named The Spirits lately on the camp, but the guards had been doubled anyway today. The water situation had now become dire, another five died the night before from illness. This to the general, was the reason he had come to speak with the Commissar...he had the only barrel of clean water left in the camp.
The Commissar, did not like that he was being asked to ration his water out to the sick troops. It was their fault that the natives had stolen the rest of their supply. He was a member of Ba Sing Se's highest level of privilege and he was not about to give up his water to anyone. Now, he was in the middle of yelling at the lowly general for allowing things to have degraded into such a state here in camp. The road building was stopped. He had orders directly from Grand Secratatit Tran Gao to have that road build as fast as possible. His neck was literally on the line for this. Failure would mean his execution. So to save his own hide, the Dai Li Commissar ordered the construction to start back up.
This was what lead to the strike. The soldiers just plain out refused the order, and now the general was risking his own neck to get them out of being punished for such an act. The once powerful army corps he had lead had now been reduced to nothing more than a few hundred sick, drying, and captured soldiers. What was once 20,000 men had been slowly reduced by attacks from rebels, natives, U.R. forces, sickness, the climate, wild predators, downing, construction accidents...the list went on and on.
He was knocked back into the real world by the Commissar's loud yelling. "General! Do you have any clue as to what you are doing to my reputation back in Ba Sing Se?!"
The general's faced showed a small grin as he give his answer. "I do...I'm saving my army...from you." And with that, he produced a hidden pistol from his sleeve. It was a exact copy of those ones being produced by Equa-Tech. Only, this version had been made by another company in Ba Sing Se. It wasn't as effective as the one's used by the U.R. , but it did the job still.
It took only one shot to the chest to end the Commissar's life...and his reign of terror.
Well that was bit of a plot twist! The next chapter is about the scale down of the conflict Tal has been a part of. After that...it's time for our two main characters to get hitched! A couple of fluff chapters to keep everyone happy and coming back for more.
The thing is however, I haven't seen many reading the story anymore. I'm becoming quite sad because of that. I've haven't received a review in months!
Do people just read these stories for the fluff?
Anyway, I'll just keep writing. It keeps me from playing endless hours of Call of Duty anyway!
But please...do fav this if you like it and...please for the love of the spirits...leave a review to show me that you all still like this story.
Maybe PM me and give me an idea for a future chapter. I like writing this and would like to get some of you readers more interest in the story.
