"What in Agni's name are you doing?"
Kyeong startled at the sound of the woman's voice, and Ozai wrenched his head from the man's grasp, spitting reflexively. The guard turned to face the figure silhouetted in the doorway, wearing a bemused grin of too many teeth.
"What does it look like?" he asked, and reached down to fondle his swollen prick, unwilling to let the interruption spoil things.
The woman stepped forward, fists clenched and shoulders squared back in a stance of disused authority. From his vantage point on his knees, Ozai eyed her warily. His whole head throbbed – the swollen skin of his right eye, his broken nose, cheekbone, the roaring of his own pulse in his ears – but a new heat blistered across his cheeks at the thought of being seen by yet another person in this wretched state.
The woman's eyes flickered over him briefly, and he could feel the muscles of his thighs tense instinctively, as though to shield himself from her view, but then her furious gaze returned to Kyeong.
"This ends now," she snarled at him, her eyes clearly trained anywhere but below his waist. The guard laughed, echoed by his three companions.
"Oh, don't be like that," he cajoled, "Stay. If you're fine with sloppy seconds, or rather –" he made an exaggerated show of counting on his unoccupied hand – "filthy fifths, there's plenty of room for you in tonight's entertainment."
The woman narrowed her eyes in the dim light of the cell, and Ozai could feel his stomach roil in a somersault. Unlikely as it was, given her apparent distaste for the situation, the thought of having a woman force herself on him was only marginally less distressing than the thorough face-fucking Kyeong had intended to give – and that was only because he doubted his body would be up to the task, which was a form of degradation all on its own.
Either way, he knew he had neither the energy nor the strength to fend off yet another assault. He could already feel the panicked prickle of adrenaline begin to fade, yielding once again to the fog of delirious exhaustion.
The woman gestured at him, and he stiffened. Why was she here, anyway? Even with only one good eye it was clear to Ozai that she wasn't a prison guard – her uniform was a different cut, with armor belonging to the resurrected air-force. A soldier, then. Possibly a loyalist, though Zuko had dealt an exceptional blow to his father's supporters by imprisoning Ukano and his so-called revisionists, and few were open about their politics anymore.
Even fractured as they were, the notion of a single woman attempting a coup was laughable.
It occurred to him that she might be one of Azula's kemurikage agents in disguise, but he dismissed the thought almost as soon as it entered his mind. His daughter, sane or otherwise, had not made any attempt to see him since her little excursion to relocate Ursa. That he had any notion of her actions in the last several years was due only to the loose tongues of the prison guards, and whatever Zuko deigned to tell him during his visits.
No, whoever this woman was, she was not here to restore him to the throne, nor to rescue him on his daughter's behalf. It was a bitter, lonely truth, but at least it was not a surprise.
As she gestured, the woman grated out, "We don't treat prisoners this way."
The words sounded strangely hollow as they evaporated from her tongue. As though she didn't fully believe them herself.
"All evidence to the contrary," Kyeong sneered, taking a threatening step closer to the woman. "Maybe we ought to show you how we treat people who interrupt us, too."
To Ozai's left, the firebending guard flicked his wrists and a steady pair of fire daggers jetted from his hands. He watched the woman shift her body, eyes flickering, taking in the guards' positions around her, the open door of the cage. She widened her own stance, mouth set in a grim line.
And then the cell erupted into chaos.
All warfare is based on deception, or so it is said. Ta Ming had always thought this particularly accurate when fighting against benders. From a distance, a single bender can appear to be much stronger, much more of a challenge. Up close, denied the advantage of space, even a group of them aren't as difficult as might seem.
She held on to that deep conviction when the guard before her, still somehow palming his own erection, shot out a ball of flame at her from his other hand.
Already low to the ground, she dropped even further, bolting forward in a crouch. A rush of heat roared above her, sweat blossoming involuntarily across her back, but she plowed on. The hard ridge of her skull caught the man in the stomach, winding him, and the growing fire in his hand abruptly fizzled. She wrapped her arms around his legs, ignoring the pungent smell of his exposed crotch from just below her nose, and propelled him like a battering ram towards the open door of Ozai's cage.
Once inside the cage she hauled him down, aided by the steady descent of his unbelted trousers. They wrestled on the floor for a moment before she was able to hook one forearm beneath his calf and wrench upward with all her strength while plunging down her elbow against the upper part of the same leg. There was a sickening, satisfactory noise – somewhere between a crack and a pop – and then the man started screaming.
No wonder. His leg was wrong, bent up at the knee in a cruel parody of his earlier erection, which now flopped flaccidly as he writhed in pain. The man howled, clutching at the injury, far too occupied with pain for any further attempts at firebending.
"You bitch!" he screamed, his eyes wide and very white. Ta Ming drove her fist against his head a few times for good measure, and after the third hit he fell silent.
Panting, she rose and made a come-hither motion with her hands. It was an act of far greater bravado than she actually felt, but was necessary. The bottleneck created by the cage door would only be an advantage if they took her bait, if they drove themselves forward without thinking in order to get at her. If one of them had the presence of mind to simply lock her in, it would be a disaster. But experience had taught Ta Ming that no man liked being taunted, and only the very smart, very controlled ones were able to resist a woman's mockery.
"Come get me, boys."
As expected – as hoped – the guard with the fire daggers lunged at her next. He moved in a rush of fury, bearing down on her as though he hoped to burn his way through her from shoulder to hip. Ta Ming dug her heels into the cold stone of the cell, arms shooting up to meet him. She caught his wrists, just barely, and her forehead broke out with beads of sweat. The daggers were narrow points of searing heat, hissing and sparking in the dim light.
Her arms quivered, a drop of sweat sliding down the bridge of her nose. Almost… Still locking arms with the guard, Ta Ming shifted her feet slightly, preparing.
Above her head, the guard unclenched his fists, made open claws of his hands instead. It altered the shape and flow of his fire. The daggers lengthened into jets, and the acrid smell of burning hair hit Ta Ming's nostrils as she struggled to disregard her body's natural inclination to flinch.
Singed, she decided then was as good as ever to make her move. She brought her foot up squarely between the guard's legs and then leaned back, letting the momentum of their earlier grapple and her kick carry him over her head. He landed further into the cell, face-first.
There was no time for a neat neutralization as there had been with the first guard, however. As though breaking out of a shocked stupor, the largest of the four men barreled through the cage door with a roar.
Caught between the two men – the firebending guard had made an impressively quick recovery and stood, gasping, behind her – Ta Ming had no choice but to ride the force of the larger man's motion. The air left her lungs with a loud huff as they collided, and then her head cranked back and met the firebending guard's nose. An explosion of coppery warmth sprayed from his face and down her neck, and then the three of them landed in a heap.
Collectively dazed, they stayed that way for a beat, the cell strangely quiet except for gulping, heavy breaths.
Ta Ming groaned.
Beneath her, the firebending guard had abandoned clutching the wet mess of his nose and was reaching for her, his palms hot with the impending blast of twin flames. She squirmed, jutting her elbows defensively.
Get up, get up, get up!
Too slow.
The guard's burning hands found purchase along one side of her ribcage and her hip, heat momentarily dulled by her armor, but scalding nonetheless. Ta Ming let out a pained cry, eyes wide. She thrashed harder, the movement made all the more difficult by the pawing hands of the large guard on top of her, trying to secure a hold on her arms.
With a grunt she twisted, awkwardly, face-down at last with her legs on either side of the firebending guard. The angry, blistered skin beneath her armor ached, but she forced herself to move, reaching up with her arms to grab the man by the ears and lift his head off the ground. Then she forced her arms down and the flames from the guard's hand extinguished. She repeated the motion – thud, thud, thud – hammering his head against the floor until blood from his ears began to trickle over her fingers. A small wisp of smoke coiled up from the corner of his mouth.
Then the large guard on top of her, having forgone any more attempts at grabbing her arms, hauled her up by the hair.
Lhao and Ozai had watched as the woman wrangled with Kyeong, then Yueh and the other guard. The whole ordeal had only lasted a matter of minutes, but even that short span of time had been telling.
As a small man, and a non-bender to boot, Lhao had a history of taking on the role of a scraping lackey. He recognized some of that in the woman before him – a patient tenacity, not exactly underhanded to same degree as him, but certainly determined. It made her several times more dangerous than a boisterous bully like Kyeong would ever be, if she'd only abandon whatever code of ethics clearly ruled her.
She fought well and strategically, and though the mystery of why she had appeared that night remained, her objective was obvious. Despite obviously having no affiliation with former Governor Ukano's revisionist movement, she wanted to keep Ozai from harm.
Lhao could use that.
For Ozai, teetering on the edge of consciousness as he was, the violent efficiency of the woman's combat had been a source of great relief. Watching her had also brought about a resurgence of his rage. It was disgraceful, he thought, that he should need rescuing, let alone that a single woman without bending would be able to accomplish the task.
He had contributed nothing to this endeavor, barely more than a trembling mass on the floor. It was offensive to think that a few weeks of torture and deprivation had reduced him to this, that lack of food, water, and sleep could leave him so maladroit.
He was not some helpless maid at the mouth of a dragon's den, had never been so. By all rights he ought to be the dragon.
"Quite the friend you have," Lhao muttered to him derisively as he moved to enter the cage with Yueh and the struggling woman.
Friend? Ozai blinked sluggishly, glancing from Lhao's back then to the woman, all gnashing teeth and scrabbling hands, Yueh having lifted her nearly off the floor. The word was entirely wrong for any relationship he'd ever had, even in childhood. He had servants, enemies, subjects. People who performed his will, or who opposed it. Friend implied too much loyalty to fall into the latter category, and altogether too much autonomy for the former.
He watched as Lhao hauled back his arm and drove his fist into the woman's gut as Yueh held her up. She groaned, spit bubbling past her lips at the impact.
"We've got five hours before the next shift of guards," Lhao said, his voice calm and steady. Another punch, this one to the charred section of armor at her ribs. The woman clamped her teeth together, strangling the sound of her own pain.
Lhao continued, "And before the night is done, I'd like to know who you are, and just what else you'd be willing to do for our esteemed prisoner."
He made as though to strike her, and then his fist loosened, coming to grip her by the chin. Lhao scanned her face, trying to read the expression in her chestnut brown eyes. She was not, by Fire Nation standards, a pretty woman. With her narrow features and high cheekbones, she might have passed for handsome if she had been born a man, but as it was, with that strange mess of Earth Kingdom hair? Plain. Very plain.
His hand slid down, coming to rest at the knotted belt of her uniform.
"I can't say I'm as impressive as Kyeong over there," he tilted his head in the direction of the guard with the broken leg, "but I promise I'm much more… imaginative."
The woman jerked her hips away, barely keeping purchase on the ground with her feet.
Gingerly, Ozai tucked his feet beneath him and willed his body to stand. As he watched, an old Fire Nation adage occurred to him – one originally coined by non-benders. Better to die by the sword you know than the flame you don't. It was a platitude that even Ozai's brother, fond of all things proverbial, regularly rejected. Sometimes the unknown, taking a risk, was vastly preferable to the certain. This was no different.
He had no idea what this woman meant for him, but whatever her intentions were, he was convinced they were a better alternative to what he knew awaited him.
His vision swam, and he steeled himself against the impending dizziness. He took a silent, shaky step forward. Then another. Then another, at even greater speed.
He rammed into Lhao just as the man had slithered a hand down the waist of the woman's trousers. The guard fell sideways, Yueh released the woman's hair, and then all was a blur of motion.
Lhao rolled over, spite and hatred in his eyes, and Ozai dropped his full weight down onto his knees, pressing hard against the exposed flesh of the guard's neck. Lhao thrashed, eyes suddenly bulging and fearful. With his hands still bound behind his back, Ozai struggled to keep his balance atop the man's neck.
He fumed at how graceless the act was, how difficult it was for him to subdue even a single opponent in this state. His head buzzed almost painfully, his body ill and aching from the constant surges of adrenaline. Pathetic, how drained even such a simple action made him. He grit his teeth, grinding his knee hard into Lhao's throat, and eventually the man stopped struggling beneath him.
When he looked up, the woman had managed to wedge Yueh's head through the bars of the cage. The large man flailed and roared in frustration like a khomodo rhino, but he was well and truly stuck.
The woman hastily retied her belt, then knelt and yanked a ring of keys from Kyeong's waist. She gave Ozai a nod of acknowledgment, then freed one of his wrists from the shackles behind his back. He flexed his fingers appreciatively, bringing his hands up to his face for inspection. The woman hesitated for a moment, then seemed to overcome whatever conflict waged within her and secured the shackle back on his wrist.
Ozai felt his face warp into an expression of fury, snarling up at the woman.
"Poor thanks for saving you," he croaked.
"This is a relocation, not a rescue mission."
The woman's voice wasn't cold, exactly, but matter-of-fact. Almost as though she were reassuring herself, as much as putting him in his place.
"Can you stand?"
He tried, but the effort was too much. The last reserves of his anger had vanished, now there was only the hunger, the thirst, the tiredness. His eyes were heavy, so heavy.
Ta Ming rolled her eyes in exasperation, hitching her arms beneath him and hoisting him up onto her shoulders. The burns along her hip and ribs chaffed and complained, but she set her mouth in a grim line and marched out the cell.
She was halfway down the stairs of the prison before it occurred to her that she probably should have grabbed something to cover him with. Her thighs burned with the effort of supporting her weight and Ozai's, and the thought of turning around or extending their escape by searching for a spare set of clothes was abandoned.
Well, she thought mirthlessly, as she resumed her descent down the seemingly endless stairs, ass-first it is.