Chapter 9: The Resistance

Someone was knocking on the door to Zuko's apartment in the most annoyingly frantic way possible. He peered out to see Jin looking beside herself.

"Are you alright? Yun said…" Her hysteria trailed off and turned into a look of disgust. "You faked a head injury to get out of going to Quon's party. Didn't you?"

"No, I didn't. My head, it really hurts." He put a hand to his forehead and groaned.

"You're pathetic."

He dropped his act. "Don't tell the girls."

"Do you know how worried Suri was?"

"Yes."

"I bet Mushi isn't sick either. Honestly, using your friends' kind natures and playing the sick-old-man card. You two are terrible."

"Quon's inviting the 'important new members of our community.' I'm not going to that." In truth, he didn't want anyone to recognize him.

"He's a little fast to suck up to the Fire Nation."

"Yeah."

"Take tomorrow morning off too."

"What?"

"Your injury will look more realistic that way. Meet me by the Wu Tan Arch. You know where that is?"

"Yeah. It's by the University. Why?"

"I have plans. You come with me tomorrow morning and I don't tell Mimi that you're a big fat liar."

"And I'm the terrible one."

She raised her eyebrows, turned on her heel, and left.

When he met Jin the next morning, she refused to answer any of his questions about what they were doing and led him to a nearby dancehall that they had visited a few times with Yun. It was closed, but Jin knocked out a peculiar beat on the door and a few moments later they were greeted by the owner, Genki. He was a broad shouldered man with a scruffy black beard and hands the size of cabbages. He would have been intimidating if not for the excitement in his eyes and the grin that was mostly obscured by his facial hair.

"Hey, Jin. We've been waiting."

"Sorry. Is everyone else here?"

"Yeah."

Zuko bit his tongue and followed them down to a basement room where several people were seated around three tables that had been pushed together. There were more than ten people in the room and they were thus breaking the law. Great. What had Jin got him into now?

She took a seat at the head of the table and the room fell silent, waiting for her to speak.

"I would like to begin by thanking you all for your bravery, and welcoming you to the Ba Sing Se resistance."

In addition to himself, the Upper Ring was represented by a smug nobleman, a frightened minor government official named Pong, and Hyun Su (who waved at him). Then Genki; Dr. Isamu, the former Dean of the University; and a businessman with a braided mustache represented the Middle Ring. A cocky weapons shop owner named Hiro, a full-bodied Madam from a brothel, and a currier with the nickname Roller were from the Lower Ring. Then there was a grumpy farmer from the agrarian district, who was stuck in the Middle Ring until his boy showed up with his papers.

Zuko had no idea what to do, so he stayed quiet while Jin went over point after insane point. Instructions on recruiting new members, ideas for subtlety undermining the Fire Nation, directions for setting up safe houses in each ring, orders to spread the word to neighbors to band together and comfort each other in this time of crisis, and insistences that they encourage anyone outside the resistance to comply with the Fire Nation as much as possible. "Don't give them a reason to become violent."

She went on to plan finding the people wanted by the Fire Nation and smuggling them out of the city. The Fire Nation had very kindly given them a list of their names, which Jin had taken from one of the bullion boards in her first act of subterfuge.

"They're hiding. How are we supposed to find them?"

The noble blinked at them as if they were stupid. "I know where they all are."

All eyes turned to him as the room fell quiet again. Hiro was the first to speak. "…How?"

"The nobles like putting hiding places in their houses. Secret rooms, hidden basements. You know. It's kind of a competition, who can have a better hiding place."

"And you know where they all are?"

"Yeah. If I don't then my wife definitely does."

"If you know this, then what makes you think the Dai Li don't?"

He shrugged, "They didn't find mine when they raided my house."

Jin declared that it was worth a look and that Lee would go with the noble and smuggle them down from safe house to safe house: Hyun Su's shop to Genki's bar to a dilapidated apartment building that the businessman owned in the Lower Ring (Roller coughed something that sounded like "slumlord.") Jin left the method of smuggling them up to Lee.

He rolled his eyes. Jin hadn't asked him if he wanted to help. She had just told him.

"But how will we get them out of the city? We can't just walk through one of the holes that the Dai Li took out of the wall. They'd see us."

Zuko couldn't keep quiet any more. "Dig under the wall. It's how the Dragon of the West got in."

"It took him almost two years!"

"But he didn't have Earth Benders." Honestly, this was the stupidest group of rebels ever.

So it was decided that Hyun Su (who agreed happily) would dig a tunnel from the farmer's barn (he agreed less happily) to a spot in the woods a mile outside the wall. When this project was completed, they would dig tunnels between the rings to permit easier elicit travel.

Dr. Isamu spent time complaining about the closing of the University, which caused Jin's jaw to tighten. Zuko again spoke up and suggested that the doctor find out what the Fire Nation would want in exchange for the University to re-open.

The man's eyes narrowed at him. "What do you mean?"

"I'm sure if the faculty took loyalty vows, and the students said the Fire Nation oath every morning, and they went through your curriculum with a fine toothed comb – adjusting your version of history and adding classes about Fire Nation culture – they would let you re-open."

Isamu looked horrified at the suggestion of lowering his integrity to keep the institution open.

Jin calmly recommended that Dr. Isamu write a letter to the Governor, as just asking what it would take wouldn't hurt anything. Later, Jin would leave a copy of this letter where Zuko would find it and he would insert all the appropriate honorifics and greetings and niceties to curry favor. He never found out what the response to the letter was, but the University did not re-open under Fire Nation rule.

Jin then arranged to get information on the Fire Benders and the Dai Li. The madam volunteered for this, saying that her girls were the best spies in the world and could uncover anything. Zuko was disgusted, but Jin was as impassive as ever.

She moved them right along to her final discussion point. "What do we know about Quin Wei, the new governor?"

Zuko groaned internally. This meeting just got worse and worse. He knew a great deal about Quin Wei. The man was status hungry to the extreme, and completely incompetent. The fact that he had been made Governor was ridiculous and told him that Long Feng was probably still pulling the strings. He was more devoted to his pack of feathered-Pekinese than he was to his wife or political responsibilities. One of the animals was almost always hidden in his sleeve.

Back in the court, he would always thrust his three daughters at Zuko in hopes that he would be taken with one of them and make her the future Fire Lady. It was done with very little tact, and the girls were several years older than him and vapid and unattractive. After his banishment they had all been married off to men who were surely heir to something or another.

Quin Wei also began Zuko's hatred of the tsungi horn when he gave him one for his eighth birthday. The instrument was bejeweled in a manner that Zuko thought (and Azula loudly commented) was tacky. It was also engraved at eye level with "To his illustrious highness, Prince Zuko, from his humble servant Lord Quin Wei." Zuko's mother had insisted that he take lessons since he had such a fine instrument. He immediately quit the lessons when his mother disappeared, much to his uncle's grief.

Zuko voiced most of this information - leaving out the parts about the tsungi horn – and then awkwardly explained that he knew it "from talk at the tea shop."

By the end of the meeting he was disgusted with his amount of involvement in the resistance and angry at Jin for bringing him along. She knew he was mad, but she was a pro at ignoring him. She knew that even if he was upset, he would help out and eventually get over it, because that was just the kind of guy he was.

He decided not to talk to Jin when she came into the tea shop, choosing instead to ignore her in a passive aggressive sort of way. She laughed at him, and he eventually broke his silence by telling her that it wasn't funny. She wasn't funny. Nothing about this was the least bit amusing. She disagreed and he stomped into the back room to brood.

Out of the dozen men wanted by the Fire Nation, two had been captured and another two had supposedly already made it to safety. The rest were surprisingly easy to find after convincing their wives that Zuko wasn't a Dai Li agent in disguise.

The wanted men did not like his method of getting them to Hyun Su's shop. Apparently over-large flower pots were too cramped and undignified to transport important men who were on the lam. He had to move them to the lower ring in a hay cart with a hidden compartment.

Finding a hay cart with a hidden compartment was a difficult task. It was almost as difficult as convincing the guards at the upper gate that a hay cart was a perfectly normal thing to see in the upper ring.

Jin met them at the final safe house wearing a huge grin on her face that irritated the hell out of Zuko. He felt that she had manipulated him and she knew it and was overly pleased with herself. In reality, Jin was glad that the resistance's first mission was successful. Zuko didn't give this fact any mind.

Instead of acknowledging her, he looked around the safe house for the first time. It was a dilapidated apartment building that was currently unoccupied except for the relocated nobles, a group of new recruits, and about a million cockroaches. The new resistance fighters were scraggly, dirty, armed, and thin. Zuko recognized two of them and groaned.

"You!" the shorter of the two yelled, stomping up to him. "Who let you in here? You're just going to get us all arrested, you ugly piece of snot." Every word in the last phrase was punctuated by a jab at his shoulder where he had recently been stabbed.

"Oww! Stop that, it still hurts! Crazy midget!"

Jin appeared at his shoulder, looking far too curious and amused for his liking. "Who's your friend?"

"We're not friends!"

Zuko sighed. "Jin, this is Smellerbee and over there's Longshot. They're freedom fighters. Smellerbee, this is Jin. She's leading this train wreck."

Jin bowed and Smellerbee glared at her. "You the one who let this loser in?"

"Yes. Are you the one who stabbed him?"

"What of it?"

"Nothing. It's just a pleasure to meet you at last." Jin smiled at him like her birthday had come early, causing him to roll his eyes and scowl.

Longshot looked apologetic, but there really wasn't anything to do about Smellerbee.

There wasn't really anything to do about Jin either, except to go along with it and glare at her as much as possible. Despite his obvious disapproval and his many attempts to be less than helpful, the resistance soon grew and flourished with Jin as their subtly competent leader and Zuko as her loyal right hand.

The resistance movement helped the freedom fighter find her true calling. Graffiti. The symbol of the resistance – a green circle with a square in the middle – had popped up everywhere. It was seen so often, in fact, that no one would believe that they were all drawn by Smellerbee (with limited help from Longshot and Zuko, who gave her a leg up to reach high places and carried her large homemade brushes.) The symbol was never clean. The brush strokes were violent and splattered, and she managed to make the simple design look threatening. It was like an angry eye was watching the Fire Nation.

A large symbol appeared on the door of city hall, above every gate in every wall, on the doors of houses that had a Fire Nation presence, and on the statue of Fire Lord Ozai that had been erected in an upper ring park (the symbol appeared along with a mustache and glasses). She created complicated, intimidating murals on the sides of the passenger trains. She dribbled paint along the streets used as fire bender patrol routes, of which Longshot had quickly developed a thorough knowledge. She even broke into one of the armories and splattered green paint on the skull-like helmets.

We are watching you and we are everywhere.

Her dream was to get inside the palace, where she would paint the symbol across Long Feng's desk and Quin Wei's throne room. "I may even be able to find his bedroom. Can you imagine the look on Long Feng's face when he comes in and sees the circle on his bed sheets?"

"I can't imagine Long Feng sleeping," Zuko said. He and Smellerbee weren't friends. That was certain. But they held a mutual respect for each other given how he had snuck out of the city and blown up one of the Fire Nation supply ships down at the port, and how she had thought up with a way to intercept messenger hawks. "Unless he's sleeping in a hole in the ground."

"Yeah. Maybe he's a demon. He probably haunts the streets at night looking for people who are out after curfew so he can catch them and suck their blood." This conversation sparked a whole new wave of graffiti based off of a stencil of Long Feng with horns and fangs and scary eyes.

"Did you hear the rumor?" Mimi asked a few days later. "People say that Long Feng's really a monster and at night he grabs people from their houses and steals their brains through their nose. He's making a zombie army. He leaves a mark wherever he's attacked someone."

"No, no." Suri corrected. "He takes their soul through their mouth. It's like he kisses them. They can think, but they have no feelings or conscious."

Mimi shuddered.

Much to Smellerbee's delight, Quin Wei soon put a ban on green paint. Instead, the Fire Nation kindly provided a red substitute, which mildly irritated Jin as more and more red roofs and furniture appeared throughout the city.

Smellerbee dipped a finger into a fresh bucket of red paint, studying its texture and the way it dripped. A grin spread across her hawk-like features.

"It worries me when you smile like that," Zuko said.

"I was just thinking, imagine that a Fire Nation patrol is walking along in the night and they see that there's red paint dripped along their path. They may laugh to each other, proud that I had to change materials. They'll think that they've had a minor victory. They'll continue on, feeling happy, almost ignoring the trail I left for them. Then they'll see it. The splotchy red trail will lead up to the body of a Dai Li agent, resting against a fountain or a wall. Across his chest I'll have put a green circle. And they'll wonder if the path they've been following was really paint. They'll piss themselves in fright." Her smile really was scary.

"You're far too morbid. It's unhealthy."

She shrugged. "I have to keep up my reign of terror."

"You know Jin won't like that idea."

"It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."

Zuko sighed.