Chapter 17: Shadow's Vengeance

The stillness of the forest clearing was broken as the earth began to roll and crack. Finally it burst open, and from the opening arose the form of a man who seemed rather worse for the wear, both from his underground detour and recent battle. Long Feng scowled as he shook dust off himself, then brought his hands together with all the force he could muster, causing the fissure from which he'd emerged to seal itself.

Using earthbending to propel himself underground was hardly the head of the Dai Li's favorite way to travel, but it did have its advantages- namely, that it was nearly impossible to track unless one was an earthbender skilled enough to read vibrations in stone. For all her intellect and deadly skill, not even Princess Azula could force firebending to reveal his location. Turning away from the clearing, he began to stalk off into the forest night.

The situation was bad, but not unsalvageable. Long Feng didn't know what had happened to his Dai Li agents, but much as it pained him to admit it Azula had been right about one thing- for all their skill, the Dai Li would be no match for trained soldiers in direct combat, particularly once the princess and her friend joined in. The best course of action now would be to return to Jian Chin and warn the man that Azula was coming and planning to rescue her mother. The warlord's men might not be as good as the Dai Li, but there were a lot more of them. Weight of numbers was, in Long Feng's opinion, a crude and inelegant strategy, but it could be effective. Of course Azula would kill many before she was taken down, and that would make putting Jian Chin on the throne more difficult, but so long as the warlord and Ursa both survived, his plans could proceed.

Something rustled in the tree above him. Long Feng paused and listened, and then, to his utter lack of surprise, a shadow-wrapped figure jumped down in front of him.

"You," the minister said in a tone that dripped venom. "This is your fault, girl- all of it. If you'd just killed Azula cleanly we could have been on our way before the soldiers and Ty Lee ever found us. But you had to stop and play with your dinner, and you've cost me dearly. Do you have any idea how long it takes to train ten Dai Li agents?"

"Do I look like someone who cares?" Wei Ming asked, matching his malice with her own. Long Feng noticed that she was holding one of her arms strangely, like she was having a hard time moving it; Ty Lee's doing, no doubt. Apparently the shadow hadn't come out of tonight unscathed either. "If your men had killed the soldiers properly they couldn't have found us. Don't blame me for your own mistakes."

"As you wish," Long Feng said. "From here on I will have no reason to. Consider this alliance terminated. Now get out of my way."

"I'm afraid I can't just let you walk away from me, Grand Secretariat," Wei Ming said, and with her functioning hand she drew one of her long knives. "You see, you still have something I want."

"What?"

She smiled her feral smile and leaned in close. As she did so, Long Feng noticed that her appearance seemed changed, somehow; before, her face had possessed an eerie, uncanny beauty, but now her cheeks seemed hollow and her face wasted and gaunt, and that made her pallor stand out as even more ghastly. It was almost like looking into the face of a corpse…

Finally she spoke, and Long Feng found himself unsurprised at her words. "You. Did you think my revenge was only against Azula? This world is a breeding ground of treachery and evil, and there are so many out there who deserve punishment. Do you really think the Earth Kingdom is any better than the Fire Nation? I'd hoped that either you or Azula would manage to bring down the other for me, but it seems that won't be happening. So I guess I'll have to kill you myself."

Long Feng backed up slowly, making sure that he was centered above the earth and could draw on its power. "Well then," he said in an effort to stall Wei Ming for at least a few more moments, "if you're going to kill me, it doesn't matter what I learn about you, and I feel like you owe me an explanation. How do you know me?"

"I suppose I have changed a bit since we last met," Wei Ming said. "But I'm sure you remember this." She pulled back her hood and smiled a vacant smile. "Hello. I'm Joo Dee. Welcome to Ba Sing Se." She took a step forwards, and her smile became feral and mad again. "We're so lucky to have our walls to create order."

Despite all his self-control, his years of practice stoicism, Long Feng was stunned. The Dai Li had used brainwashed young women- code-named "Joo Dee"- to spy on and subtly manipulate important visitors to Ba Sing Se in the guise of tour guides for years, but the idea that one of them might come back for revenge was absurd. The conditioning broke the mind completely, so that the Joo Dees were good for nothing but following orders. That one of them could be standing here, now, as such a threat… unthinkable "I don't believe you," he said. "You're just trying to unsettle me. What do you really want?"

"What do I want?" Wei Ming shrieked, all pretension of self-control gone; her violet eyes almost seeming to bulge out of her skull. "I want my home, and my family, and my life back. But I can't have that, can I? You and the Fire Nation and all the other monsters stole them all away from me. But I will have the next best thing- pain for pain. This whole corrupt, hateful world will know my suffering before I am through."

"Even so, your revenge will have to wait," Long Feng told her. "You need me, remember? Oh, you might not think I can guess what you're trying to do, but I can. You want Jian Chin on the throne of the Earth Kingdom- that's why you eavesdropped on our conversation, and why you asked so many questions about it later on. I don't know what you want with the brute and I don't particularly care, but if you do want to see him made king, then you need me. I'm the only one who can get him into Ba Sing Se in secret, remember?"

"No," Wei Ming said. "I spent months in your catacombs after the war, mapping out the ways, and I still remember them. I can get Jian Chin and his soldiers into the palace on my own, but there will be no Dai Li to help him maintain order. It will be chaos and death, and the proud city that did nothing to help the people of the Earth Kingdom will learn what war really means. And if the Avatar tries to stop it, I'll kill him. He'll never see me coming!" She gave a short laugh that sent chills up Long Feng's spine. Whatever her history, the girl was even more erratic than he'd thought.

Then her eyes fixed on him, cold and hard again. "I needed someone powerful to bring suffering to this world. I thought I'd use Ozai, but he'd already given up, so I killed him. I'll admit, he wasn't a loss I regretted. Then I came to you, but you disappointed me too. You're too cold-blooded, Long Feng. You just want to maintain everything like a well-oiled machine, and you wouldn't dream of destroying what you'd worked so hard to build just for my revenge. Jian Chin, though- he dreams of glory, and he's too short-sighted to realize the consequences of his actions until it is too late. Have I said enough for you, Dai Li?"

"Oh yes," Long Feng said. "You certainly have." The head of the Dai Li leapt back and pulled, and the earth beneath Wei Ming's feet erupted. Ducking away from the pillar of sharp stone that now shot skywards, Long Feng threw both hands forward and chunks of fallen rock lifted into the air and shot towards the shadow. If she wasn't impaled on the pillar, the projectiles would finish her.

But she wasn't there. Wei Ming had dodged just to the side when the ground burst open, and now before Long Feng's shocked eyes she leaped down the side of the pillar, dodging the flying bits of rock with ease. Her feet took the minister in the chest, knocking him backwards and breaking his stance. He crashed back against a tree and Wei Ming raised her long knife. "Any last words?" she asked softly.

It was his last weapon, one that he wasn't even sure would work, but if the girl was telling the truth it would stop her in her tracks. "Joo Dee," he whispered, "the Earth King has invited you to Lake Laogai."

For an instant spasm crossed Wei Ming's face, and he had hope – but then she snarled, and struck him against the side of the head with the hilt of her knife. Long Feng crumpled, pain lancing through his skull. He looked up to see her standing over him. "Foolish man," she said. "You know nothing. I defeated your conditioning long ago. You never had a chance."

"So, in the end I was nothing to you – just a piece in your game," Long Feng managed to gasp out through the pain, determined to hurl one last barb before the end. "She said much the same. You and Azula… very much alike."

It would be his last words, and Long Feng knew it. Still, the expression of pure shock and rage on Wei Ming's face as she brought the knife home was almost enough to make him smile.

/

The girl who called herself Wei Ming, though that was not her name, pulled the knife away and watched as Long Feng's body stilled. One of her enemies was dead, and she had expected to feel pleasure, but she didn't. Instead, his final words echoed through her mind. Was she really like Azula? True, she had lied and cheated and killed her way across two continents, but her goal wasn't power. She wasn't exploiting others for her own gain, but righting a great wrong, destroying the two corrupt nations that had ravaged the world with their war so something better could rise in their place. Wasn't she?

Banish your dark thoughts, a cold voice said in the back of her mind. She heard it sometimes when she was lost or troubled, and it always put her back on the right path. Long Feng was a monster- he deserved to die, and you should pay no attention to his final mutterings. This world is full of those like him, but we will show them all the pain they've caused. We will force them to experience it.

"Yes," Wei Ming murmured. "The cruel Fire Nation, arrogant Ba Sing Se, the Avatar who did nothing for a hundred years while the world burned- they will all pay."

They will. Remember what happened to you, and your parents? Will you let that go unavenged?

"I will not." Wei Ming closed her eyes and leaned against the tree, letting memory wash over her.

She was born in a small village in the Earth Kingdom, the daughter of two farmers. Wei Ming hadn't been her name then, and vengeance wasn't yet the purpose of her life. Her people knew about the great War that ravaged parts of the Earth Kingdom, but they paid it little mind. They were far out of the way, after all, and produced nothing important, so why would the Fire Nation bother them?

They had been proven horribly wrong. She still remembered the night when the soldiers came, riding their terrible beasts and throwing fire at their victims. She never learned why they were there or what they wanted. Maybe they wanted food or prisoners, but all the girl knew was that they killed.

She and her father had been to the market in a nearby, larger village and were just returning home when the soldiers struck. She remembered seeing their house go up in flames and running towards it, shouting for her mother. She could hear her mother's screams from inside, but she stumbled out horribly burned to die in her daughter's arms.

After pillaging the village the Fire Nation soldiers departed, and the few survivors gathered together to determine their course of action. It was clear to everyone that they'd been naïve fools- the villages were not safe from the Fire Nation. If they wanted to truly be free, they needed to travel to Ba Sing Se.

She didn't remember how long the traveled, but it felt like weeks. Finally they arrived and were escorted into the city, and a man in strange green robes assigned them to living in what he called the Outer Ring, a place of tall, rickety houses and narrow streets. It soon became apparent to both the girl and her father that Ba Sing Se was not a paradise but a prison. The green-robed men- the Dai Li- controlled everything, and there was nothing they wouldn't stoop to in the name of absolute order. Her father was furious at this tyranny in the very heart of the Earth Kingdom, and he tried to gather more refugees together to resist them.

The Dai Li came for him in the night, and when the realized that his daughter had heard them they took her too. The two of them were bundled up in a cart and carried swiftly away to an underwater fortress she heard them call Lake Laogai. There they took her father away, and whatever form of punishment they used on him she never learned. She never saw him again at all. She was brought before a high-ranking Dai Li, who looked her up and down and declared that she looked "old enough". She barely had time to wonder exactly what she looked old enough for before she was dragged into a small room with a glowing pot and a Dai Li who told her that everything was going to be all right now…

After that she remembered nothing for a long time. When she came back to herself, she found that she was sitting in a room with other young women, all dressed in identical yellow robes and all mindlessly repeating words that a Dai Li agent told them. A part of her mind was still free, but the rest was blissfully blank. She was safe in Ba Sing Se, and that was all that mattered. Once an older man with cold eyes came in to examine them, and she heard the other Dai Li call him "Grand Secretariat Long Feng". She remembered the name.

Then there was chaos, and all the Joo Dees and other prisoners were moved to another base under the palace. She didn't know why, and wasn't even really capable of wondering. Then she saw the Dai Li gathering, and they brought with them a strange girl who held herself with aristocratic disdain. She heard the agents whispering the name "Azula", and that coldly beautiful face and those soulless golden eyes burned themselves into the girl's memory. This was someone who had never had to suffer pain or loss, and the girl found that she hated her. Later she would learn that this was the princess of the Fire Nation, one of the spearheads of the War and the one who brought Ba Sing Se down, and her hatred was redoubled.

And then the Dai Li and Azula were gone, and the girl found herself alone in the darkness, forgotten. Oh, they remembered to bring her food and water, but she seemed to have been relegated to a matter of little importance. She just sat, in a cell with all the other Joo Dees, able to think but not able to move or act, a prisoner inside her own soul.

But at last, on what she would later learn was the day of the summer solstice, something changed. A presence entered her broken mind, and she felt more than heard a cold but somehow soothing voice asking if she was through suffering. Those responsible for her condition lived, it said, but it could give her the power to make them pay. To make the whole arrogant world pay for its cruelty and injustice. She accepted, and then she felt the presence pouring itself inside of her. Filled with its power, she stood under her own command for the first time in months, and the shadows that filled the cell clustered about her, making her their own. Now she knew that she could walk unseen by mortal eyes if she wished, and though she had never had any kind of training she was aware that she possessed extensive knowledge of hand-to-hand combat. When the Dai Li agent came with food for the Joo Dees she rose up and killed him effortlessly, and took the two fighting knives she found in his robes for her own.

There was so much work to be done, she knew, so many who deserved to suffer. But two faces stood out in her mind, one a middle-aged man and the other a young girl who both looked upon the world as their possession. Long Feng was her ultimate tormentor, but the voice whispered that it was the other who was truly worthy of hate. Azula was raised in wealth and had never known hardship, and she and her family were the root cause of all the suffering the War had brought. She grew powerful off others' pain, and the girl knew that she deserved to die more than anyone else alive.

And so Wei Ming waited and plotted until the time was right and her vengeance could begin. Long Feng had paid, and now he lay cold and dead at her feet. Ozai too lay dead in his cell, but that had been unsatisfying because he had already been broken by another. But Azula still waited, unbroken, as did Ba Sing Se and the whole Fire Nation. They would all know her pain before she was through. Jian Chin was a tyrant and a fool, and she would inflict him on all those arrogant and complacent people who stood by and let the War happen, along with those more directly responsible.

After spending so long brainwashed and then pursuing vengeance, Wei Ming no longer remembered her real name, or the name of her village, or her parents faces. But they no longer mattered. Vengeance was all, and soon it would all be accomplished. Without even a backward glance she left Long Feng's body behind and flowed off into the night.

/

And so, revelation. Wei Ming was once a Joo Dee (though not any of the ones the Gaang interacted with) and before that one of the refugees who fled to Ba Sing Se. Her backstory comprises repeated abuses from those with power, and now she has the strength to strike back at those she feels have wronged her – which is basically everybody (though she admittedly has reason to feel that way). Sometimes I'll imagine certain songs I've heard as fitting for characters; for Wei Ming's backstory, I feel Gollum's Song, which plays over the credits of The Two Towers, is somehow most appropriate: watch?v=UgFpHs5dGdg

Wei Ming's relationship with the spirit who is the Trilogy's ultimate antagonist is a bit different from Azun's. Azun was a soldier, and essentially treated the spirit as he would a respected superior officer, but he was always separate from it. Wei Ming is actually inhabited by the spirit*, which was able to slip in largely because the Dai Li's brainwashing had already reduced her mind to Swiss cheese (and it could have taken any of the other Joo Dees in the room just as easily, for that matter). Because she'd already had so much of her identity stripped away, the spirit essentially filled in the cracks with its own being, resulting in what amounts to a new personality equal parts spirit and girl; as a result, Wei Ming only rarely perceives it as something separate from herself, and if you asked her would tell you that her plans are entirely of her own devising. One of the thematic ideas of the trilogy is madness and the various things people mean when using that word as expressed through various characters; Azula is actually mentally ill, Azun was a fanatic, Ilook the waterbender is criminally insane, and now we see that Wei Ming is possessed.

Long Feng's death here has echoes of his defeat in the show, once again outmaneuvered by someone he thought he had under control, this time with fatal consequences. Good, but not good enough – the ultimate summation of his life. His part may be over, but Path's other two main antagonists are still out there, and still awaiting Azula. We'll return to her, Ty Lee, and Shin next chapter…

-MasterGhandalf

*"Beginnings" would eventually establish that spirits can only possess people for a short time before killing them. I try to keep my fics lined up with canon as much as possible, but this particular plot point was too important for me to change. I've decided that the nature of this particular spirit makes it easier for it to inhabit human hosts, and why this is will become more apparent as we learn more about it in this fic and the next.