The Specialist

"Ah, and so we meet again. Sooner than I expected, at that."

The voice floated out of the darkness, and hung in the air for a chilling moment. Then the screaming face of a monster burst out of the shadows and rushed at Avatar Aang's face. The young man kept complete mastery of himself, and didn't so much as react to the cheap tactic. "Greetings, Koh."

The Spirit's face shifted to what Aang considered its default, a human visage painted like an actor of the classic theatre. "I sense challenge in you, Avatar. You have not come for my help this time, but neither have you come in the form with the most reason to seek my unbinding."

"I cannot seek justice as Aang?"

"Justice?" The face shifted to that of a dour old man and laughed. "You humans think you know justice, and pretend it a concept you invented for yourselves. Yet when it comes to paying the price of your crimes," the face changed again as the Spirit spoke, the hair darkening and growing, the wrinkles smoothing as the shape of the face shrunk and tapered, "you resist with your full power and obsess on avenging yourselves no matter how impossible."

The face the Spirit wore was the face of the woman Ummi, taken to punish her husband, the Avatar Kuruk.

Aang's own countenance was stiller than stone. "We all have our place and part in the universe, and can only act according to balance. I do not challenge you, or your justice. I actually came to offer you a gift."

"Oh, and what might that be?" Koh took a new face, a komodo rhino with cracked horns, and roared at Aang merely for the exercise.

"I bring you a friend. I bring you justice. I bring you self-inflicted destruction." The dramatic words did not so much as move Aang out of his stiff posture.

Koh's voice grew impossibly smooth and enticing. "I don't see a weapon in your hands, Avatar."

"My weapon has been waiting in the shadows all this time. Mai, please, show yourself."

She did so.

Koh swept over to examine her, his facing casually reforming into that of the old Spider Lord. He twitched forward and back, taking the girl in from every possible angle, the compound eyes glistening in the low light.

Mai just stared back. "Okay, Aang, you win. This is pretty interesting." Her voice, although low and without melody, nevertheless lacked the deadness that the Avatar had temporarily affected. "I owe you a gold piece."

"Hello, child," Koh hissed.

"What's up, monster?"

"Do I frighten you?"

"A little, yeah."

"You cannot hide it from me."

"I know."

"Yet you try."

"Actually, I'm not."

"No?"

"No. This is my scared face."

"Congratulations. Not many can withstand me."

"Yay. See my happy triumphant face?"

"You taunt me, child."

Mai leaned over to catch Aang's flat gaze. "We have a smart one, here." Her tone was light, and her posture casually elegant, but her face had not moved from its human nothingness.

Koh swirled back over to the Avatar, reverting to its painted face. "Is something wrong with her?"

"That is a complicated question. But she is a good person, and my friend."

Koh screamed at Aang with the face of a blue demon. "Remove this insult from my domain!"

"Not an insult. A gift. You've never had a friend, one who could allow him or herself to feel around you. They either hid their true selves from you, as I do, or you harvested them for what you saw as a moment of weakness. Mai is neither of those. She is perfectly herself, but completely immune to you."

Koh said nothing.

"I must, once again, be going. Thank you for your hospitality," Aang intoned.

Mai waved. "See you in my dreams, monster."

She followed Aang out of the cave, yawning without expression. Koh glared at her back until she was swallowed by darkness.


Back in the real world, the bodies of Aang and Mai opened their eyes and stretched out of identical lotus positions. The Avatar let out a relieved breath and turned a sympathetic smile at the woman beside him. "Thank you. If past experience is anything to go by, and all the Avatars from Kuruk onwards have paid a lot of attention to Koh, he won't be able to get over you. He'll keep coming after you, and only you, until one of you is lost."

Mai nodded expressionlessly. "No problem. I can handle him. He can spend all the strength he wants, he won't break me. Once he's worn himself into a pathetic little bug, I'll step on him. Should be fun."

Aang studied her for long moments. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought you into this."

"I wanted to help."

"Yeah. I'm still not sure why."

"Everyone I know has already helped fix the world." She rubbed at one eye. "I might as well do what I can to help fix the other one."

The Avatar put a hand on her shoulder, a friendly gesture carefully planned to avoid the knives she wore beneath her clothes. She ignored it for a while, but Aang's strength was greater than Koh's. Mai's shields wore away, and the tears began falling while her body shivered. He held her, not bothering to look at her face.

It was, of course, perfectly composed.

END