Wei opens his eyes and finds himself lying by the side of the pool. He's not sure what just happened, but he quickly concludes that it was probably terrible. There's a part of him that hopes he just hallucinated the past two days because he's been dumb enough to drink too much of the wrong thing, even though he's at least forty-three years old and he's meant to know better.
His vision is still pretty dark around the edges.
He gets onto his hands and knees, and drags himself over to the pool so he can splash some water on his face.
His perspective shifts, and when he reaches out towards the water, his fingers touch canvas.
The pool isn't real. It's a backdrop. Wei blinks to focus his eyes, glances over his shoulder, and finds himself looking down at a courtyard containing rows of chairs and tables.
He's sitting on floorboards, not dirt and loam. He's on a stage.
The sky is black, and there are no stars. Everything is illuminated by red lanterns. Their light seems to pulse slightly.
Wei considers lying down and staying like that until things improve, but something catches his eye.
The chairs and tables are all vacant, all except for chair on the front row, which is occupied by a skinny little dog with grey fur and pointy ears. It looks like one of those dogs you see eating garbage on the side of the road.
The dog peers at Wei with beady blue eyes and thumps its tail against the seat.
Wei faces the dog properly, and sits down. He twiddles his thumbs. He wonders, not for the first time, if he's really dead.
Wei sucks his teeth for a moment. Then, as he's sure there's no one around to overhear him, he tells the dog, "You know, I'm not having a very good week."
The dog jumps off the seat, scrambles up onto the stage, and trots closer. It licks his hand.
Wei idly pats its head. It's a funny-looking dog, with a pointy face and a fluffy tail. Maybe its got some fox in its ancestry. Wei tries to recall what he's heard about foxes. All he knows is that they eat people's livers. He's reasonably sure that the dog-thing won't do that, though. If anyone ate Wei's liver, it'd probably choke them.
Or do foxes eat hearts? Wei isn't sure.
The dog-thing nuzzles Wei's palm.
Wei gets an odd lump in his throat.
"Do you know where I am, girl?" he asks the dog-thing. He has no idea why he thinks it's a girl, but there you go.
The dog-thing sits down and scratches its right ear. "I know where everybody is," it says, without moving its mouth.
Right. A talking dog. That's fine. That's just fine. Things could be worse.
Wei runs through a mental checklist of every scenario that could result in him talking to a dog. "Are you a spirit?" he asks, because he wants to rule that out before moving on to the nastier questions like, 'What have I done to myself this time?', and 'Is this what people call a 'psychotic episode'?'.
He should probably be scared.
The dog-thing wags its tail again. "I am a spirit, yes."
"Or," Wei says, still unable to shake the feeling that the universe is laughing at him, "I'm just in the presence of a good ventriloquist."
"Actually, it's both," the dog-things says. "I'm an amazing ventriloquist."
"That's... nice," Wei replies, then resumes twiddling his thumbs. He is having a conversation with a dog. "So you're a spirit."
"Yes."
Wei chooses to believe the creature, because all the other alternatives are too grim. He's never met a spirit before, but he'd like to think that they can't be as dangerous as people.
"Where am I?" he asks.
"In the spirit world."
Yes, that would figure. Where else would you talk to a spirit? In the spirit world. Ask a stupid question, Wei.
"So it's not like, uh, I think I'm talking to you when I'm really just standing on the side of a road, ranting to myself, right?" Wei asks. He has a vivid mental image of himself yelling at people in the street while wielding a bottle.
"No," says the spirit. It's difficult to figure out its gender from its voice, but there's something about it that reminds Wei of a precocious teenager.
"How do I know you're telling the truth?" Wei says. "You could be part of my delusion."
The dog-thing lets out a little sigh. "The truth of anything is fundamentally unknowable."
"That's... Not the answer I wanted to hear, thanks."
"All you have in this world is what you think you know. And what you think you know is this: you are talking to a spirit, and the spirit is telling you that you're not delusional," the dog-thing says.
"Well, shit," Wei says.
The dog-thing prods his hand with its nose. It has a very warm nose, for a dog. "Do you want to go back to the physical world?"
"Yeah, I..." Wei begins, and thinks about it. There are so many thing he needs to do, and he'll never be strong enough, or smart enough, to see them through. "...I don't know. I'm tired."
"I know," the dog-thing says. "But you still want to find Amon, don't you?"
Wei looks over at the little creature. It watches him patiently, as if it wants him to throw a scrap of food.
Wei feels the hairs on the nape of his neck rise.
"What do you know about him?" Wei asks, very carefully.
"I know that he went around telling other humans that the spirits were on his side. Which was very rude."
Wei says nothing.
"To add insult to injury, if he HAD approached us and asked for assistance, some of us would have been happy to oblige," the dog-thing continues. "But... No. That would have required patience and respect on his part. He's a very silly man."
Wei looks out across the theater, taking in its opulence. The stage is painted a rich dark red - the paint is so shiny that it seems sticky and wet - and the pillars are carved with Fire Nation designs, florid and sinuous and... Actually, you know what, Wei decides that he'd better not look at the pillars, because the carvings are trembling slightly as if they're trying not to move, and Wei would like to pretend that he hasn't noticed this.
"Humans just don't seem to be scared of us any more," the dog-thing muses.
"Should I be scared of you?" Wei says, focusing all of his attention on the dog-thing now.
Its tail wags faster. "You? No. I like you."
"I, uh, destroyed a shrine," Wei feels compelled to admit, because if this things is going to eat his heart or his soul or whatever, then he'd like to get that over and done with.
"Yes, you were very angry," the dog-thing says. "But don't do that again, okay?"
"Uh. Okay."
"I know you're not a bad person, you just get so mad sometimes," says the dog-thing. "You're human, after all."
"...Y-yeah," Wei says, then rubs at his temples. If he didn't have a headache to begin with, he'd definitely have one now. "Look, what do you want from me?"
The dog-thing swivels its ears back, and fidgets, submissive. "Well, I don't want your trust, for a start. I don't expect your trust. I just want your help, if you're willing to give it."
"Really," says Wei.
"Really. I could use your help in finding Amon."
Ah. Yes. Everything comes down to Amon. "Why?" Wei asks. He's quickly starting to suspect that spirits are just as shitty as humans, in exactly the same ways.
"Because you have a human form, and I don't. I... can't just wander around the physical world by myself. It's dangerous," the dog-thing says. "In return, I could make you stronger. And I could tell you things."
Wei holds his hands up. "Wait. Why do you want to find Amon?"
The dog-thing curls its upper lip slightly. "Are you ready for a bit of exposition?"
Wei just fixes the dog-thing with a hard stare.
"Very well, I'll try to keep it short and sweet," the dog-thing says. "It's like this: I may be small, but I have pride. And I don't think Amon should've been allowed to run around telling people that he represented us spirits when he didn't. That was... That was really rude. Someone should have done something about that, and it worries me that he was just allowed to do it, and no one challenged him. I mean, the Avatar didn't even talk to anyone about it, she didn't see it as an issue, though to be fair she's just a human girl and she's not without bias, and I-..."
The dog-thing pauses.
"...I'm dissatisfied with the way things are currently progressing," it says. "But it's not just that. I also want to find Amon for another reason. I want to find him because he knows stuff about meat."
Oh. Meat.
"Right," Wei says, "So you... Wait, what?"
"Meat!" the dog-thing says. "It's one of the things you humans are made of. And you just... You just have it. It grows around you. By itself! You don't have to consciously make it or put any effort into it or anything! And it stores energy so well! And it's always, always changing! And... Uggh, you don't even appreciate it, but it's amazing. You know the spirit world? It doesn't have any meat. At all. Everything is just made of chi. Meat is why humans are quick and clever and spirits are slow and stupid."
Wei tries to think of a good reply to that, and just settles on, "Hm." He discreetly looks around the theater for an exit.
"Meat," Wei repeats.
The dog-thing nods. "He's a meatbender."
"That just sounds wrong," Wei tells it.
"Blood. Meat. Same thing," says the spirit.
For some reason, Wei's mind snags on the 'it stores energy so well' bit that the dog-thing just said. He thinks of batteries. He wonders if the dog-thing even knows what a battery is.
"So yes, if you help me find Amon, you can have revenge against him and I can eat his brain," says the dog-thing. "Win-win situation."
Yes, Wei has gone back to wondering what sort of horrible thing he drank in order to make this conversation possible. He expects spiders to start coming out of the walls any moment now.
"Can you repeat that last part, please?" Wei says.
"I said, it's a win-win situation."
"I meant the bit about brains."
"I said, I can eat his brain. In a manner of speaking."
"...Do you eat brains often?" Wei asks, because that seems like a good question to ask when one is discussing the eating of brains.
"No. Few of them contain anything of value."
Is that why the spirit hasn't eaten Wei's brain yet? "So..." Wei says, picking out each word carefully, "You. You want. You want to eat Amon's brain?" He has a mental image of the dog-thing adding the brain to some stir-fry. Delicious.
"Brain. Mind. Same thing."
Wei remembers the thing he heard about foxes eating hearts.
"This is all a bit too weird for me," Wei states.
The dog-thing actually shrugs. Dogs aren't really designed to shrug, but this one pulls it off pretty well.
"And if you did eat the guy's mind, then what?" Wei asks.
"I'd have a better understanding of humans. Which might be a good thing to have, given the way the world is going."
"What do you mean?"
"Hmmm." The dog-thing screws its eyes shut in thought for a few seconds. "Humanity advances every day, while the spirit realm changes slowly, if at all. And humans are known for their aggression. They're invasive. They're voracious. How long before they start trying to exploit us for their own benefit?"
Wei concedes that it has a point. Humans have few qualms about exploiting other humans, never mind exploiting anything else.
Still, he wonders.
"Just so we're clear, if you're thinking of starting some humans-versus-spirits type fight, I'm not up for that," he says, levelling his index finger at the dog-thing.
The dog-thing's tail thumps against the floor. "After all you've been through, I think your loyalty to your own kind is admirable. But no, I don't want to instigate a war. Wars are expensive, as I'm sure you know. I'm just trying to be proactive so I'll be prepared for when... What's the saying? When the shit hits the fan."
There's clearly more to this than the spirit is letting on. "Do you reckon the shit's going to hit the fan soon, then?"
"The blades are getting precariously close to the manure, yes."
The spirit is raising more questions than its answering, and Wei doesn't need any more questions in his life. He's not even sure if he wants to know what the spirit is talking about. He probably wouldn't give a shit if the whole world just randomly exploded tomorrow. In fact, he'd probably like it if the world just randomly exploded. That'd be a nice, straightforward end to things.
And, of course, he's still not sure that the spirit is telling the truth.
"Right. So why do you want my help for finding Amon, then?" Wei says. "What makes me so special?"
"Like I said, you have a human form, and I don't. If you let me hitch a ride with you, I can move around the physical world without being detected."
Wei takes a deep breath. The dog-thing holds up a paw.
"And before you ask, I want to keep a low profile because the physical world is notoriously dangerous," the dog-thing adds. "There are reasons why spirits only visit the physical world for short periods of time. Humans always want things from us. Or sometimes they want to harm us just to prove a point."
"So you want me to carry you around, so no one notices you?"
"That's correct."
Wei thinks. How does one carry a spirit, exactly?
"You're talking about possession, right?" he asks.
"'Possession' is a very loaded term," says the dog-thing. "I just want you to share your body with me. For a short while."
"That sounds..." Wei says, very slowly. "...Even worse."
The dog-thing gives him a blank look.
"So if I let you possess me, you're gonna be wandering around the physical world looking like me, right? You'll be a spirit in a Lieutenant costume."
"You'll still be in control of yourself," the dog-thing says. "I'll just be offering assistance."
The little cogs in Wei's brain turn away, and he says, "Hmm. Sounds to me that you think I can give you some...whassit... Plausible deniability."
The dog-thing flickers, as if it's a shadow puppet and the puppeteer has just lifted away from the screen for a split second.
"You're only trying to bargain with me because you think I'm an easy mark," Wei states. "I know this dance."
Wei stands up, carefully. His back doesn't hurt, and the absence of pain is pretty weird. He almost expects the pain to spring on him as soon as he drops his guard, as if it's just waiting for him to get complacent.
"Really, you find it so hard to believe that someone might want to help you," the dog-thing murmurs, flattening its ears against its skull.
"Yep." Wei has no idea why he asked the spirits for help in the first place. He's not sure what he was expecting. And, great, he can sense a big old wave of despair rolling in like a thundercloud. As soon as he gets out of here, he's going to find a wine shop and have a long think about his options.
He looks at the courtyard. He has no idea how he's going to leave this place, but damned if he's not going to try.
"How do I get out of here?" Wei says, because it never hurts to ask.
"You really want to leave?" the dog-thing says - not angry, just surprised, and maybe even a little horrified. "Like... You're just going? Just like that?"
Wei walks past it, and hops down from the stage so he can search the courtyard for an exit.
"I mean, if you want to leave, then fine. I don't want to make an enemy of you, and I can't keep you here," says the dog-thing, "But... Lieutenant, you're hurt, and you don't have any friends back in your world. There are people who want to kill you."
Ha. Even a spirit calls him Lieutenant.
"I'll take my chances," Wei mutters. The spirit reminds him of the shipping magnate.
The spirit doesn't reply, but Wei can feel it watching him.
Wei walks past the chairs and tables to a door set in the courtyard wall. He wonders why he didn't notice the door earlier. The courtyard's walls are high and featureless - prison walls, Wei thinks, with a sick feeling - but then there's just this random door, painted Fire Nation red. There's nothing to indicate that it's bolted.
"Wait," the dog-thing says.
Wei pauses.
"If you're going back to the physical world, is there anywhere you want to go to? I could make that door open to almost anywhere you want," says the spirit.
Wei rests a hand on the door, not opening it just yet. "Anywhere?"
"Almost anywhere. Somewhere with a reflective surface. And somewhere you won't be seen."
This sounds far too good to be true. The dog-thing would need some serious mojo to pull off something like that.
"Why would you do me any favors?" Wei asks. He hates favors. People only offer favors when they intend to collect on them later.
The dog-thing looks up at the black sky, licks its nose, and emits a small cough. "You're pretty."
Wei turns around so he can stare at the spirit. He's unable to think of a reply beyond 'fuck off', and he doesn't even say that much.
"Please just pick somewhere," the dog-thing mutters.
Wei's just going to forget that the past minute actually happened.
"Gaipan," Wei says. Gaipan is far away from Republic City, and he heard someplace that the region produces good wine. Wei needs to find a wine shop very badly.
"Okay. Fine. You'll end up a few miles away from the city's north side. You should see some mountains in the distance - walk towards them until you reach a road, then follow the road south," the dog-thing says. "Word of warning, though: time works differently here, so you might return to the physical world and find that a few days have passed."
"Thanks for the heads-up," Wei mutters, and shoves the door open. He doesn't actually care what's on the other side. All he wants is to be away from this place, with its red stage and its high walls and its weird little dog bastard who apparently wants to get in his pants.
Just as the door opens, he gets a whiff of burning paper.
Wei swallows a mouthful of water. He flounders, and finds himself trying to stay afloat in a lake. All it takes is a short, painful swim to the shore before he's back on dry land.
He knows he's in the physical world because everything feels real. Like pain. The pain definitely feels real. His spine still hates him, which is oddly reassuring.
Wei coughs up some more water, staggers to his feet, unpeels his moustache from his face, and looks around. Yeah, there are mountains in the distance. Wei starts trudging towards them. When he eventually reaches the road that the dog-thing mentioned, he's too tired to feel surprised.
He wonders if he made the right decision.
He also wonders what the fuck grabbed him and pulled him into the pool earlier.
In retrospect, he should've asked about that.
Wei walks with his eyes closed, only opening them occasionally so he can check where he is.
It's late evening when the outer wall of Gaipan comes into view. The spirit really wasn't lying.
Wei passes a few small huts and stalls, until he comes to an inn on the town's outskirts. The building is big and ugly, but a warm glow emanates from the windows, and Wei can just make out the murmur of people talking. There's also the faint smell of stew (which, unfortunately, isn't particularly different from the smell of armpits, yet still smells better than anything else Wei has eaten during the past few weeks).
Wei's stomach rumbles. He pats his pockets.
It's only then that he realizes he doesn't have any money, since the goons took all his stuff earlier.
He stands in the middle of the road, still damp with lake water, and reflects on his situation: he's tired, his back hurts, he needs to kill Amon, he doesn't know where any of the other Equalists are right now, he can't remember when he last ate, he can't remember what day it is, wanted by the United Forces, and he's out of painkillers.
And he can't even get drunk.
It's the last one which breaks him.
He turns, mechanically, and retraces his steps. Maybe he can find the lake he just came from.
Wei eventually comes to a lake. He's not sure if it's the correct lake, but it's a lake, so fuck it, who cares? Not him.
He walks into the water until it's up to his waist, and clenches his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering. He hadn't noticed how cold it was before.
"Hey," he says, quietly. "Fox spirit dog thing. I was wrong. You were onto a good idea. Sorry."
Then he waits, shivering.
The temperature of the water becomes more tolerable, and the silence is only broken by distant birdsong. The breeze creates a few sluggish ripples, and the sky is so clear that Wei could probably pick out constellations, if he had any idea what the constellations looked like. The moonlight makes the world look like it's been drawn in charcoal. There are trees bowed around the lake's shores, branches dipped into the water as if in supplication.
Wei finds it difficult to stay awake. He's struggling to keep his eyes open when a small, grey head breaks through the lake's surface.
"It's okay," the spirit says, gently. "Really. Hold out your hand."
Wei holds out his right hand, palm downwards.
The spirit sinks its teeth into his fingers.
"Wei," says a man's voice, close by. It sounds familiar. "You can wake up."
Wei opens his eyes. He's somewhere bright and airy, with pale green walls and a high ceiling.
He's so comfortable.
This is the most comfortable he's ever been. It feels post-orgasmic. Things like pain and misery are alien concepts. There's no past, no future. There's just the present, which is warm and soft.
He shuts his eyes and tries to go back to sleep.
"Wei," the voice says, firmer now, "If you don't move soon, you'll get cramp in your right arm."
There's someone in the room with him. Wei tries to recall the past day or so. Does the voice belong to the guy who owns this room? Did Wei just get laid? Is that why he feels so content? Is the guy going to kick him out now? Is there any chance he can grab some breakfast before the guy's wife turns up? Isn't it strange that he's not hungover?
He really is getting cramp in his right arm.
Wei slowly sits up, and scratches his ribs. He looks around, and takes stock of the following: the sheets are silk, the bed is huge, and there's a disassembled radio set neatly laid out on the floor. He can't see the guy who spoke.
Wei wonders where Amon is, then wants to slap himself.
He looks down at his chest. He's wearing a nightshirt that definitely isn't his, because he's the sort of dipshit who wastes money on buying nightshirts instead of sleeping in their regular clothes like a sensible person. There's some more stuff folded neatly on a chair next to his bed. They can't be his, because they look expensive.
The room has a large glass window at the end of it, and it shows rooftops beneath a grey winter sky. Despite the weather, the room is warm. Someone, somewhere, clearly has money.
There's a dressing table in a corner, so Wei slips out of bed and walks over to it. His mouth is dry, and he has that lovely 'I've just slammed my hand in a door'-feeling that he usually gets when worried.
Wei looks at himself in the mirror of the dressing table.
Some asshole has stolen his moustache.
"What the fuck," he announces.
"Yeah, sorry, the moustache had to go," he then says. "It made you too easy to identify."
Wei stands there and stares.
Did he just refer to himself in second-person? And, more importantly, why did he just say that? Did that really happen?
He straightens up, crosses his arms, takes a few paces, then puts his hand over his mouth.
"It's okay," he says. "Relax."
Wei's incapable of relaxing. He suddenly finds it hard to breathe.
Gently, he says, "Oh dear. You remember our arrangement, right?"
Wei shakes his head. He doesn't know who he's talking to. "What arrangement?"
"I said I needed a human form. You agreed to this. Please, I don't want you to be upset about it..."
There's something crouched at the back of Wei's mind. Something that wasn't there before. He can just barely imagine it: something quick and silvery, and kind of warm, and not entirely unpleasant.
"Can you shut the fuck up, please?" Wei asks. "I need a moment."
He paces up and down the room, staring at the spotless floorboards. He remembers the spirit and all its sharp little teeth biting into his hand.
"You're in my head," Wei states, as a few things clunk into place.
"Sort of," comes the reply. Wei hears his own voice speaking, but the inflection is different. And it sounds so calm, so patient. Even a little bit apologetic. "It's just a temporary arrangement, though. Once I'm done with Amon, I'll leave. I promise to behave myself in the meantime."
"What's your name?" Wei says. His own voice sounds hoarse.
"Jing. Sorry I didn't introduce myself before."
Wei shakes his head, and paces back over to the dressing table so he can brace himself against it.
"I really am sorry about the moustache," Jing says (Wei definitely wants to think that Jing is the one talking right now, because things are easier that way), "So I hope you won't be upset about the haircut as well. I thought-"
Haircut?
Wei takes a proper look at his reflection.
The person who stares back is a middle-aged man with an angular, austere face and sharp blue eyes. If he smoothed his hair down, he'd pass as a high-ranking official, or a member of the military, or at least a very fancy clerk. Maybe a senior servant for a wealthy household, or the head waiter at a prohibitively expensive restaurant. In short, he looks like someone sensible.
Yes, he's definitely had a haircut.
"Well?" his reflection says, and looks a bit anxious. Mr. army general/magistrate/head waiter is now making puppy dog eyes at him.
"Stop talking," Wei snaps, and is relieved to see his own expression change to a scowl.
Jing doesn't reply.
Wei grips the edge of he dressing table. He's fine. He can (mostly) recall what happened. This is all fine. Once he's composed himself, and he's reasonably confident that he's not about to start smashing furniture or screaming at the walls, he asks, "How long have I been unconscious?"
Wei's reflection now winces, as if it's about to say, 'sorry sir but I'm afraid you can't have a table without a reservation'. "You're not going to like this. A month."
Wei's stomach lurches. "What?"
"You were injured. You needed to rest."
"No I didn't," Wei says, though this just makes him sound childish.
Jing shakes his head. Or rather, Jing shakes their head. "You were in a pretty poor state. It hurt. I had to take you to a healer."
Wei lets that sink in for a moment.
"Wait," Wei says. "Don't tell I went... I mean, you made... You took me to a waterbender?"
Jing sighs and tilts his head back, so Wei finds himself staring at the ceiling. "I had to. Sorry. It was the fastest way to get you in back in fighting form. And if I'd let you stay injured, you would've just got worse.."
"You took me to a waterbender," Wei says.
"It was either that, or let you suffer permanent damage. I wouldn't have done if I thought I had any other choice. I suppose you could look at it this way: it was a waterbender who caused the damage, so perhaps it was fitting to have a waterbender fix it."
Wei slowly sits down on the floor, because he doesn't trust his legs to keep him standing.
"You could've asked me first," he says, in a very small voice.
"Yes, but you would've said no, and I need you to be functional."
"You had me out cold for a month," Wei says.
"Yes. And sincerely I hope I never have to do anything like that again. It was a chore."
"THAT WAS A MONTH OF MY LIFE, YOU-" Wei starts, then realizes that someone might overhear. People are going to think he's a nutjob. "...You just knocked me out cold for a month and walked around in my body and you're saying that this was a chore for you? I'm sorry, was it an inconvenience?"
Jing doesn't immediately reply to that. Wei gets the impression that the spirit is thinking. Eventually, Jing says, "Yes, I suppose this is pretty horrible from your perspective. I don't know what I can do to make it better. I'm so sorry."
The damn thing actually manages to sound deeply apologetic.
Wei sits on the floor for a while, fuming, while the spirit sits in a corner of his brain and mopes.
When Wei is sure that he can speak again without screaming, he asks, "What the fuck did you do with me while I was unconscious?"
"Not a lot," Jing mutters. "Honestly, the most strenuous thing I did was eat six plates of deep fried tofu, which was... not an experience that I ever hope to repeat."
Wei stretches out his left leg so he can kick at a piece of the gutted radio set that's on the floor. "And what the fuck is this?"
"I was bored," the spirit squeaks. (Wei has never heard his own voice squeak before.)
Wei puts his head in his hands, and takes a few deep breaths. Then he picks up a valve and a piece of board from the radio. "...Did you try to put this back together?"
"Yes."
"Well, you didn't get very far with it," Wei says.
"Um. Sorry."
Wei picks up a screwdriver - there's one lying close to hand - and starts trying to repair the radio, just to take his mind off everything. Maybe it'll keep him sane.
Jing falls silent. Wei gets the feeling that he's being watched.
"Where am I?" Wei asks, tiredly
"A town named Kosen," Jing replies, still very quiet. "There's a map on the dressing table. We're about ten miles from the coast. Is that okay?"
"How the hell did I get here?"
"By train."
Wei thinks about that for a moment. "Last I knew, I was broke. How did you pay for train tickets?"
Jing shrugs Wei's shoulders. "I made some rocks look like money."
"No, seriously," Wei growls, "how did you pay for the train tickets?"
"I made some rocks look like money," the spirit repeats, now sounding a little petulant. "You didn't have any coins with you! How else would've I paid?"
"How the fuck does that even work?" Wei asks. If could slap this spirit, then he would.
"I can make things look like other things!"
"How?!"
"I don't know, I thought everyone could do that!" the spirit laments. "I mean all things are all the same anyway, really, they just look different to different people, so why is this a big deal?"
Wei has no idea what the spirit is talking about. "You can make rocks look like money," he says, flatly.
"Yes!"
Wei wants to bang his head against a wall. "You do know that money is the most important thing in human civilization, right?"
"Yes," the spirit says, "Of course I know that." It speaks with the bravado of a teenage boy who's trying to convince everyone that yeah, he has totally scored with hundreds of chicks, and he definitely has a super hot girlfriend who lives in Ba Sing Se.
"We regularly kill each other over money," Wei adds. "Money determines whether people live or die. And you can just... trick people into thinking you have money when you don't."
"Ye-es," the spirit mutters, "I know."
Okay, Wei thinks, and takes a deep breath. He's not quite sure what kind of power he's got his hands on. If the spirit is telling the truth about its abilities, then that makes it akin to a portable counterfeiting operation. They'd better hope that the triads never get wind of this.
"Don't give people fake money ever again," Wei says. "It'll make us really easy to track."
"I didn't use fake money all the time. I stole a guy's wallet while he was sleeping on the train."
Wei opens his mouth to say you mean you stole stuff while pretending to be me?, and then he remembers that he's wanted for 'terrorism'. Theft is the least of his concerns. "Oh. Great. You're a regular career criminal. Did you do any other illegal stuff I need to know about?"
"No! Honest. I only stole one wallet. Apart from that, I was very boring. I was polite to everyone I met. I didn't drink alcohol, or eat too much street food, or smoke. I didn't even masturbate. Except once. By accident. Which was probably good for you, so-"
Wei throws his screwdriver at the wall, and puts his head in his hands again. For just a split second, he's dangerously close to throwing up.
"You know, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that last part," Jing mumbles. "Sorry."
Wei doesn't reply. He's too busy trying to not think about certain things.
"I, uh, got you some spectacles," Jing offers, like this is some sort of consolation prize for Wei's horrifying lack of bodily autonomy. "They're on the dressing table as well..."
Wei remains on the floor for a little while longer. Eventually, he manages to compose himself and stand up. He goes to get the map. Just as promised, there's a pair of glasses sitting next to the map on the dressing table.
Wei's hand hovers over the map for a moment, but he picks up the glasses instead, out of curiosity. Jing stays silent.
Wei puts the glasses on. He recoils. The world suddenly looks a lot more protuberant than it was before, and there's a lot of... stuff. Too much stuff.
It's actually nauseating, so he takes the glasses off again.
"If you wear them for a while and get used to them, you should stop getting headaches," Jing says, in the peppy little voice of someone who thinks they're being helpful.
Wei ignores the spirit, and opens up the map. One side shows the town, while the other side shows a chunk of what's presumably the Earth Kingdom. It doesn't tell him much.
"Amon - I mean, Noatak - is in a town on the Ruyi Peninsula, which is about an hour away from here by train," says Jing.
Wei grunts. "How do you know?"
"I used to have a job that involved finding things. So I'm good at sniffing people out," Jing says. "...And he's not difficult to sniff out, if you don't mind my saying so. I think he might be festering a little."
Wei remains suspicious, but he just shrugs, and wanders over to the pile of clothes on the chair so he can get dressed. The clothes look brand new, and the fabric is starchy and rough against his skin. It's almost like he's putting on a costume, and he keeps stealing glances at the mirror, uneasy about the stranger who stares back.
He really does look like a clerk, albeit a very well-paid clerk. The clothes suggest knowledge and wealth. Borrowed power.
"So, about this brain-eating thing," Wei mutters as he buttons his shirt.
Jing doesn't say anything, but Wei gets the sense that the spirit has just pricked its ears up.
"What's... What's that gonna involve?" Wei says. He really should've asked about this earlier. If it involves cracking Amon's head open like an egg and scooping out the contents, then... He'll be unenthused, but not unwilling. Some people deserve what they get.
"Good question," Jing says. "Well, you know how humans have both a physical body and a spirit body? It's just his spirit I'm after. I want to drag it back to my den so I can eat it in peace."
Right, maybe it's not literal brain-eating. Wei isn't sure if he's disappointed or relieved. "And that means what?" he asks.
Wei's shoulders shrug by themselves again. (And Wei should be worried by how natural this feels, how quickly he's adjusting to being controlled.) "I'll open a temporary portal between the two worlds. It's not difficult, so long as there's a reflective surface nearby. I'll walk you through it. You just need to take me to him."
"If it's easy to open a door between worlds," Wei says, "why don't you just open a door right next to him, then grab the guy's spirit and skedaddle? Why drag me into it?"
"I could do that, but your help is going to make it easier. The veil between worlds is, um... Well, it's like skin. It's stretchy, and if you tear through it, it heals very quickly. If I went around opening doors willy-nilly, I'd just wear myself out. It requires a lot of energy to just go around ripping holes in things. Also, there are, um, right ways and wrong ways to open doors, and if you do it wrong, it's very dangerous. I need an accomplice."
Wei thinks about this. He wonders if he's doing the right thing. Then he decides that he doesn't give a shit.
"Wei?" Jing says, quietly. "I promise it'll be like I said: once I get what I want, I'll go away and leave you in peace."
Wei just frowns as he straightens his cuffs.
"You're wondering what the catch is, right?" Jing asks.
"Huh. You can read me pretty easily," Wei murmurs.
"Well, yes, but, listen, if everything goes as planned, there shouldn't be any catches. This should be a mutually beneficial arrangement. I'm a reasonable person, Wei, and we have more to gain by co-operation."
Yeah, sure, the spirit would say that.
"How many brains have you eaten before?" Wei asks.
Jing takes draws a slow breath. "To be honest... Just one."
There has to be a story there. "Did you have an accomplice then?"
"No, and uh..." Jing hesitates for a moment, and Wei feels a roll of nausea in his gut. "Things were different."
Wei side-eyes his reflection in the dressing table mirror. His reflection gives him an abject look.
"Alright," Jing confesses, "He was a Fire Nation soldier in the engineering corps. It was during the Great War. The Fire Nation did some particularly transgressive things during that time. I certainly wasn't the only spirit to attack their soldiers. There are so many people who still haven't recovered from what the Fire Nation did. Does this bother you, that I'm capable of hurting humans?"
Wei takes a moment to put on some pants and mull over things. "Not really," he says. "So what do you get, exactly, out of eating people's... brains, minds, whatever?"
"Their knowledge. Their memories."
"So you can't get, like, uh..." Wei looks up at the ceiling as he chooses his words. "...Their intelligence? Or any other inherent traits? Like, their bending?"
Jing scratches his - Wei's - chin in thought. "Why would I want things like that?"
"You don't think shit like that is important?"
"Important to humans, maybe."
Wei nods absently. "Well, just checking. I don't want you picking up Amon's bloodbending somehow. The world doesn't need another bloodbender running around."
"Hm," says Jing, and Wei senses skepticism.
Wei changes the subject. "So how're you gonna nab this guy? Because it's not like I can fight him one-on-one."
"Look under the bed," Jing says.
Wei crouches - and damn it's so good that he can move without pain - and sticks his hand under the bed, groping around until his fingers find some sort of handle. There's a suitcase. One of the big, solid, shiny ones that cost too much money. (How much cash was in that wallet Jing stole, anyway?) Wei pulls the suitcase out and opens it up. The interior is padded, and it contains a few doodads that look like pulleys, and some skinny baton-y things.
He takes a moment to mentally put all the doodads together, assembling them in his mind until he figures out what he's looking at. It's a compound bow. Gansukh has one like it, come to think of it. Though hers is a lot nicer. This one looks like the ugliest kind of prototype. Some of the parts might be Satocycle sprockets.
"Where did you get this?" Wei asks.
"Oh, you know, it's not a big deal, I just got an ordinary bow and customized it a bit," Jing says, and buffs his fingernails against his shirt.
Great. Is this thing even usable? "You can't put a radio back together, but you can customize a bow?" Wei mutters.
"Look, I know how a bow works, but the radio is full of wire and fiddly little silvery bits." Jing now sounds indignant. "It's not my fault you humans are really weird. One day you're using ballistas and blasting jelly, the next... You're making little maps out of tiny pieces of metal and putting them in boxes that do things."
Wei picks up a chunk of the bow. "I'm not sure I want to use this contraption. How do I know it won't snap in half and hit me in the face if I try to draw it?"
Jing hmphs. "I have the memories of a Fire Nation engineer, I'll have you know."
"Was he a good engineer?" Wei asks.
"His commanding officer thought so! He was very clever! He was clever enough to, uh..." Jing trails off. "...He was clever."
Wei turns the bow over in his hands. "How clever could the guy've been if he got his brain eaten by a spirit?"
Jing opens his mouth, takes a deep breath, then says, "...Well, I think it's a good bow."
"I don't even know how to use a normal bow," Wei grumbles.
"I do. You just point it, I'll aim it. Teamwork."
Wei digs through the suitcase. It also contains a bundle of arrows, some of which have odd little metal tubes crudely attached to them. Further digging uncovers a few hypodermic syringes. Tranq darts.
Something about this strikes Wei as being very ass-backwards.
"You're a spirit," he says. "You can make rocks look like money. You can make doorways open all over the place. Why do we even need a bow? Can't you just throw spirit magic at people or whatever? And..." He remembers something. "How come you had to get to this town by train? Why couldn't you just open a door in the spirit world that'd take you straight to your destination?"
Jing takes a deep breath. "It's relatively easy to open doors to the physical world from inside the spirit world but it's much harder to open doors to the spirit world from the physical world because the rules are different, and I'm more familiar with the spirit world anyway, which is why I need your help catching Noatak like I said and also there's a limit to how many doors I can open without drawing attention and also when you're in the physical world it's easier to follow physical rules just like how it's easier to follow spirit rules when you're in the spirit world and-"
Wei's stomach lurches.
"Okay. Shut up," Wei says, holding up a hand. "I want you to explain all this crap to me after I've had some breakfast."
Jing mutters, "I know what I'm doing."
"Right." Wei pats down his sleeves and pockets to see what's in them. His pockets just contain the room keys, enough money to buy food for a week, and a few small pebbles. "Of all the stupid assholes on this planet you could've possessed, you chose to possess me. But you say you know what you're doing."
Jing is silent for a moment, almost sheepish, and then he says (and Wei doesn't know why, but he's definitely thinking of the spirit as a 'he' now), "Can I make a request?"
"If it's not too nasty or dumb, yeah."
"Can we have dou fu nao?"
Wei sighs, runs his hands through his hair, and looks at the grey winter sky through the window. "Alright, kid. Sure."
It's only when they leave the room that Wei realizes the size and lavishness of the hotel. He pads silently down long hallways until he reaches the stairs to the ground floor, and he avoids looking at the other guests. Jing stays quiet, which gives Wei just enough time to resume wondering if Jing actually exists, or if he's just a very elaborate symptom of a nervous breakdown.
Wei crosses a cool green lobby and steps out into the street.
The town's buildings are small and old-fashioned compared to the ones in Republic City. Everything looks so quaint that it doesn't seem quite real, and Wei considers returning to his hotel room and staying there until the cops arrive and lock him up somewhere safe. He feels like he's a fake person in a fake town, a figment of someone's imagination, and he recalls the old story about the man who dreamed he was a butterfly. Wei briefly entertains the thought that he's an aspect of Jing's delusions, not visa-versa, and then he dismisses the idea as a load of pretentious crap.
He worries that he looks strange to people. He wonders if they can tell there's something wrong with him.
The first thing he does is nip into a shop and buy a newspaper, because newspapers provide a quick and dirty connection to reality and the wider world. Then he locates a food stall with dou hua on the menu, and takes a seat.
The woman behind the counter actually smiles at him and pats her hair when he looks her way. Wei finds it unusually easy to smile back. He's given a steaming full bowl of tofu and scallions.
The food is okay, he guesses, though he's used to eating bean curds with sugar, and this stuff tastes strongly of soy sauce. He pushes the chunks around with his spoon. He's not hungry. Jing's the one who ends up shovelling it into his mouth.
Wei just sits there and feels vaguely itchy. The prospect of killing Amon doesn't give him much joy. It's just a thing that he needs to get done. A chore.
While Jing deals with eating for them both, Wei reads the newspaper. Apparently, being possessed does wonders for your ability to multi-task.
He flicks through the pages. The smell of ink and paper is comforting.
There are 'before' and 'after' photos of the clean up in Republic City. There's a lengthy article on the trial of Hiroshi Sato, which Wei should probably read eventually, but not right now, because it's too miserable and he's too sober for it. There's a smaller article on Sato's daughter, along with a picture of her that was presumably taken a long time ago, as she looks wide-eyed and genuinely cheerful. There's an article on how the Central Earth Kingdom is having problems with bandits; apparently there was a pretty violent train robbery just last week. There's an article on the high taxes in Ba Sing Se. There's an article on a shipping vessel that's gone missing in Southern waters, presumably due to piracy. There's an article on political tensions between the North and Southern territories.
Wei hunts through the paper, searching for news about anyone he knows. He wants to know if further arrests have been made, but there's nothing. He hopes that the chi blockers are alright, then tells himself to avoid dwelling on them.
There is only a small article on the continued efforts to find Amon. The details are vague.
The article includes a picture of an Equalist poster, depicting Amon in profile against a red and white sunrise.
Wei stares thoughtfully at the mask.
Wei decides that he should find some wood. He's always been good at carving.
At the back of his mind, something small and hungry lifts is head as if scenting the air.