Last time in ILMiRC:

Just when our misguided girl, Ru Li thought that she had Amon in her sights, her whole mission lost its target when a triple thread triad of BAMFY earthbender babes stole the show! Beating Amon into what could have possibly resembled pulp, they gained a short victory, but were disheartened when their enemy managed to slip away.

With no sign of Amon now, is Republic City finally getting a long earned break from the onslaught of revolution? Or is there something bigger in store?

And finally, even more mysterious than the boy Loki, is the firebending capabilities bestowed upon Ru.

Where did they come from?

What do they mean?

And just how did Loki know things would go so smoothly; according to. . . plan?

Tune into this week's episode of ILMiRC to find out!

. . .

The Noodle Shop

. . .

Three girls, all dressed in natural hues of green, huddled around a long worn wooden table. Heads together in thought, they worked to make sense of what happened to them, and their new firebending guest.

"I still think that she can't be trusted" exclaimed Ume, throwing her hands into the air in exasperation.

Kili looked toward her, raising her hands, promoting peace. "I know that the situation is weird. . . honestly this whole week has been the strangest. . . whatever. . . the thing that I see, is that she was at that rally to stop Amon. You could see it in her eyes. It wasn't. . . hatred. . . it was revenge."

"Revenge for what, do you think?" asked Jetta. "Apparently she's all the way from the border cities. That's a long way to go for some small vendetta."

"Huh." Kili breathed.

Creak

The girls looked over to the cot that their guest was on. Managing to rustle herself out from under the swath of clean covers, the girls tousled hair poked up over her pillow.

"Shh, not a word until we get this sorted out," Kili whispered as she pushed her chair back, walking over to the bed. She crouched down, grabbing a fresh towel from a white, porcelain basin of cool water.

"Hu-uh. My head is pounding," Ru Li managed to grate out, her voice too sounding like it was scorched in her fire's heat.

Kili grabbed her hands, which had been working around the covers, aiming to fiddle with something in the strange place around her. "Yeah, and you'll completely forget about that if I don't keep these hands of yours cooled off. Nasty burns you've got there, girl."

Ru Li smirked. "Better that than a forty ton chunk of rock protruding from a gaping head wound."

"Oh, now you're just complaining!" Kili laughed, good naturedly.

Realizing that she'd better just set her curiosity to the side for the moment, Ru Li placed her head back onto the pillow with a small, breathy snort. She turned her head, then, toward the window on her left, staring out of the many- paned clear glass port. Light was dappling into the room, caressing Ru Li's face. Out the way, Ru could see the mid morning bustle of Republic City; sellers, tellers, businessmen walking through the thoroughfare onto their posh skyscrapers they worked in. . . A boy, the girl's age, walking down the street, attempting to balance an unnaturally large quantity of groceries. . . life seemed. . . normal for those people down there.

But not for this group. Not for one second. Not for me.

Ru Li closed her eyes, moving her head back onto its proper placement. Feeling Kili move the soft cloth over her still callousing hands was soothing. She hadn't felt at peace in months.

"Kili, can I ask you something?" inquired Ru Li.

She stopped and lay the cloth back in the basin, flicking the water off of her hands in two short bursts.

"Well I suppose that you can, since you've been such a cooperative patient this morning."

Ru Li rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah. . . But. . . That night. Why were you three attacking Amon? Better yet. . ." she closed her eyes and furrowed her brows, "I was supposed to. . . to-"

"You wanted to take down Amon. You wanted to get revenge for your fathers untimely death, and prove to the Equalists that they couldn't just throw away someone's life like that, bender, or non."

Ume strode toward the bed, crouching down on her knees, and placing her head along the side of the bed. She looked at Ru Li in such a serious way, that it demanded all attention.

"How- . . . how did you know that's why I was there?"

Jetta answered now. "Loki."

". . . Am I supposed to know who that is?" Ru Li rebuttled.

Jetta pushed out the wooden chair beneath her, failing to push it in, getting a strange glance from Kili. She walked over to the window next to the bed, hands in her pockets, looking out onto the street below.

"He's someone that works for Amon. Closely. He knew all of his secrets, and well, all of ours too." Jetta looked at Ru Li, then. "He offered us a chance to get a jab at Amon, and we blew it. He knew you were coming that night too. Something about intercepting a message from some Equalist nutcase, or whatever. But apparently he had expected you to come all along. He played all of us. But you didn't meet him. Heh. What a cheeky kid. Said that our only condition in getting our shot was 'not to die'."

Ru Li furrowed her brows, some memory suddenly peaking her interest.

"Just don't die, all right?"

Could it. . . could that guy have been the same person?

She thought of the mysterious boy. . . his scraggly deep russet hair, and his eyes; glistening, serious, yet concerned under the shoddy light of the warehouse. She could still feel his touch.

I . . . would really rather not have THAT headache at the moment.

Ru Li responded after a moment of thought, "Never saw him."

"Well that figures. You were in the crowd for a long time before everyone finally cleared out of there. There was no way you would have had any motivation to notice him anyway." Kili said, finally finishing her care, a new set of cloth swaddling her still recovering hands.

But then. . . why won't he get out of my head?

. . .

Kili

. . .

Later that day, Kili had taken up her usual post at the front of the noodle shop, dishing out deliciously delightful meals to her hungry patrons. She moved back and forth, balancing the rush at the front of the building and the cooking food in the back with ease. It helped that she could tell when they were moving around. While she couldn't exactly feel vibrations in the ground, like the famous Lin Bei Fong, she could feel the shift in the ground itself. It was almost like she was standing on one end of a mattress, and someone was on the other, bending the object slightly with their weight. Kili could feel these shifts, kind of like she was gravitationally inclined toward them.

Looking out of the shop front later that afternoon, toward closing, she bent over the front of the stand, twiddling her thumbs. It had been a good thirty minutes since her last patron, and she didn't want to waste a whole pot of noodles, considering that she had just thrown another batch on. Looking back at the simmering food, she sighed.

Coming to grips with the fact that she just lost 35 yuan in that batch, she began to put everything away and clean. Having scrubbed down the stove, she grabbed the pot, getting ready to toss it into the waste basin, when she was startled by the shop bell. Jumping, and spilling just a bit of broth, she quickly set the pot back down.

"One second, please!" She shouted toward the front, moving swiftly, and wiping her hands on a worn cloth.

Slinging the once white rag over her shoulder, she stepped out into the front, seeing a young man facing toward the square, looking at the sunset as she had been earlier. His legs were crossed in front of him, and one tanned elbow perched itself upon the edge of the tall counter.

"You caught me at just the right time, I was about to toss the last p-aaaaa-," Kili stopped herself midsentence. Hearing her coming up behind him, the man turned around, the golden rays of the sun catching the chiseled features of his profile. He had a strong jaw, with ink black hair, short on his head. His eyes, golden, were searing with mystery. "Uh, I mean, hot. POT. I MEAN POT. AHA. HA."

She rubbed the back of her head, cheeks rosy and obviously showing her embarrassment. The patron stared at her, unmoving.

". . . Uh. . . Is this a bad time?" His voice was deep, quiet, and yet demanding of all her conscious attention. It was like warm honey.

"NO! No, uh, in fact, you're the last customer today, special! JUST FOR YOU! ILL BE BACK!"

She ran, disappearing behind a flap of curtain, leaving the boy sitting speechless on his stool. She staggered back in seemingly no time at all, rushing toward him, sloshing soup over the lip of the bowl. With a clunk and a splash, a porcelain bowl was set in front of him. He looked at it for a second, and then smelled the sweet, yet salty aroma of the broth. Taking up a spoon, he started to slurp it down.

Well. That went well.

"How is it?" She asked him, eagerly.

He didn't respond, taking the bowl up into his hands, and gulping it down, letting gravity do all the work.

A single clear drop of liquid escaped from his lips, trickling down his lips, and then down his tanned chin, coming to rest on his neck before he set the bowl down and then wiped it off with the back of his sinewy hand.

"I'm in trouble," she whispered under her breath.

"That was. Delicious." He gave her a quick smile, fleeting, but there. Moving his chair back, he got up, and grabbed 5 yuan out of his pocket, placing it on the counter, more than the price of what he had ate. After doing so, he did something odd, simply standing, unmoving, at the front of the shop, confusing Kili.

Thinking that he wanted to order something to go, or the likes, Kili grabbed his bowl and returned to the back of the shop once again. Taking a short time to rinse out the bowl and get another ladle of broth into it, she then returned to the shops front, only to see that the boy had vanished, leaving the money on the counter. Seriously bewildered by the events that had taken place, she took a moment to walk onto the street, looking to see if the boy was still there. While mildly concerned for turning a profit for the to- go meal, she had. . . another motive in mind. Unfortunately, she could not find him.

Welp. That was the singularly most shortest romance that has ever been conceived in the history of EVER.

Sighing, and realizing that she would probably never see her mysterious man again, she returned to where he had been sitting, and set the bowl down, taking the money back to her hidden satchel, full of the weeks profit. Depositing the 5 yuan note into the cloth bag, and taking a moment to quickly count its contents, she gave up for the day, tossing the rest of the pot, and turning off the lights, rushing up the stairs, confused and dreaming about a golden tanned boy.

. . . who had been in the flower shop two doors down, trying to pick out the perfect floral arrangement for the most beautiful, and culinary talented, girl he had ever seen. After a good twenty minutes, he had emerged with a single flower; a yellow lily- rose. He had nervously debated whether to ask her to accompany him to the next Fire Ferret tournament match, seeing as his friend was a janitor and scored free tickets, and, unfortunately, worked up the courage just as the door to the overhead loft had clicked shut for the night.

Standing in front of the shop, quite exasperated at the failure of his love life, he decided to just leave that flower there, knowing that it would probably just be picked up by some random street kid that thought it was pretty. Moving toward where he had met the girl not too long ago, he noticed something, though. A single bowl of her noodles rested in front of his stool, still hot, and carefully wrapped inside of a gold and red cloth. He blinked once, and then cracked the biggest smile that he had, realizing that she had left him a surprise, as well. Gently laying the rose down in its place, he took the soup, cupping it in his right, keeping it warm all the way home with some firebending steam, thinking that maybe. . . just maybe. . .

He had found his new favorite place in all of Republic City.

. . .

Hey guys!

It's. . . it's been awhile. Anyway! There are going to be some shorter chapters that, as you could probably guess, introduce some new characters onto the scene. In this one, we introduced a new man, one that just may be the perfect match for Kili? Well obviously, cause that's just too obvious.

Stay tuned to see just who, and what, happens to our lovely ladies!