Disclaimer: The following chapter is entirely fictitious. Any similarity to the history of any person living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional, except when specifically noted otherwise in the cast and crew credits. All celebrity voices are impersonated and no celebrities have endorsed any aspect of this fic.

Chapter Eight: A Hint

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"I have to say, you son of a bitch, your balls finally dropped, didn't they?" Sureiyaa chuckled while Shiden dressed the bullet wound on her bicep. "I never thought I'd complement you, but indeed, bravo."

"You know what I want," Zuko said roughly. "Hiashi's dead and I want to know everything you know about her."

"Like what?" she spat. "She was a bitch and a fucking failure at that."

"You know exactly what I'm talking about! I don't care what you think, I want to know everything you know about her."

"Alright, Zu, but there's very little to say about her and I wouldn't know where to start—"

"Start from the beginning," he interrupted curtly. Sureiyaa rolled her eyes.

"Ionno, was it you who met her first?" Sureiyaa asked Shiden as she continued to wrap the wound.

"Pssh, worst idea ever," Shiden sighed, finishing the bandages off with a final tie.

"Exactly," Sureiyaa smirked wickedly. "She was a tough attitude to crack, but we broke her. She was so adamant that she didn't want to kill anyone, but eventually everyone gets over it. I have to admit, though, she did have some good ideas, but her motherfucking problem was that she was simply lacking common sense, but that's probably because of that mutt blood of hers. She was a real pain in the ass, what with her 'implausible' this and 'can't do' that, some other bullshit nonsense. She always thought there was supposed to be some kind of set boundaries within the gang, but she had to learn that pretty much whatever I said went. Like, we bought this kid, what was her name again?"

"Yousei?" Shiden laughed like they were reminiscing.

"Yeah, that bitch. We bought her in exchange for some drugs we were selling, and Yanki was all surprised that she was eight or something so she made sure she stayed at her side like all the time. It was one of those things that was adorable and ridiculously annoying at the same time. Mostly annoying since I could never get anything done with her. So when we kicked Yanki out I sold her. She was pretty much useless to me after that. Not sure what happened to her, but I really don't care."

"So she protected that girl?" he asked, recalling the ichiko he had met in Eikando.

"She liked to protect a lot of people, including my brother, but she was a fucked up retard anyways, so she was always making things worse." Sureiyaa flexed her hand and tried to move her fingers, but just could not quit accomplish that yet. "And he was a bigger pussy than she was."

"Is that why you killed him?" Zuko said lowly. Mai's eyes bulged at the words he said and turned to look at Sureiyaa for her response, but she simply laughed.

"Are we talking about the same brother?" she chuckled lightly. "I'm the only girl out of five kids. I killed my younger brother, Chin; Kyyoku was my older brother."

"Excuse me, what?" Zuko almost exclaimed. "But I thought you killed him! Hiashi said—"

"Yanki says a lot of thing, and is she ever right? From what I've seen, nope. And she thought she'd teach me a lesson when she found out—"

"WAIT!" Zuko bellowed. "She knew? And she was here?"

"First of, she didn't know, fuck-tard, she just found out, like eight years ago—"

"Is that where she's been this whole time?" he asked harshly.

"Motherfucker, let me talk!" Sureiyaa snarled. "Damn, no wonder she fucking left you, you probably wouldn't let her fucking say two motherfucking words before you trampled all over her. Goddamn!" Zuko's face fell even further as Sureiyaa took a breath to calm herself. "Anyways, before I was so goddamn rudely interrupted…

"A few years ago she stopped by, came storming into my office like she was this force to be reckoned with, or some other shit. Of course I was beyond pissed since I thought she was dead, but I learned my lesson, which of course is why Doku's dead. I was just going to kill her right then and there but that fucking firecracker comes in with this bomb and tells me she'll kill me and herself if I didn't listen. I could've taken her on, but I had to admit, she finally grew a pair instead of just cowering and pretending she's all tough. So I decided to listen to her. Of course she tells me off for leaving a burning head on her doorstep that looked like his, but she was getting all pissy with me about how she'd finally had enough of my shit and how she was tired of living in fear of everyone, so she figured she'd start out with the least amount of her worry, me.

"She was saying how it wasn't her fault that she was a mudblooded race-traitor bitch and that it wasn't fair that I would judge her for something she couldn't help. I was like what the fuck about it because to be honest, I didn't give no two fucking shits about what she had to say, but then she starts saying some shit about how she was going to protect her family from people like me. Then she started with this maudlin crap about how she wanted the rift between me and Kyyoku to be fixed, but that was the line."

"Family?" he said roughly. "What is this family I keep hearing about?"

"Really, you expected her to just do nothing for almost ten year? She fucked my brother and popped out devil children. It's as simple as that. After that whole meeting thing she wanted to be family or something so that way her family wasn't as fucked up as hers or mine. I was gonna say fuck no, but then I thought about it and decided why the hell not."

"But why?" Shiden interrupted. "I thought you hated her and Kyyoku even more? Why would you want to be family with them?"

"Eh, things were getting stale around here," she shrugged. "And frankly I wanted something that wasn't completely disappointing. Everyone kept fucking up and I wanted some kind of good news to keep myself from fucking blowing everyone up who pissed me off. So I let her send me letters once in a while of her fucking half-breed kids and what they've done, learned to walk, talking, some other BS, along with these weird pictures of them I've never seen before that her sister would give to her. But the letters from her stopped about four months ago. Never heard back except a letter my brother sent telling me she died."

"And you didn't think anything was wrong when she stopped sending you letters?" Zuko barked.

"Fuck no," she barked back. "Besides, I didn't care if she was dead, and I still don't. She was nothing but a piece of shit mongrel then and she's nothing but a piece of shit mongrel now. And besides, as far as I'm concerned those kids are better off without her. She wasn't exactly a prize pigster herself."

"How dare you say that!" he snarled.

"Shut the fuck up, you scarred face bastard, you don't know what you're talking about!"

"I think we're done here," he growled, shoving himself up from the chair. "Let's go."

"Fine, go ahead and leave," she said. "You think you're being all defensive of her, but there's a reason why I have that bitch, and it's not just because she's a mutt."

"Mai, let's go," he said harshly. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her through the door and back into the muggy air of the outside.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," she shouted to him before they left. "You may have liked her, but she was a bitch!"

"What was that all about?" Mai finally asked once the door was closed. "Who is this Hiashi and why are we looking for her? What is this all about? Her waiting for—what is going on?"

"I'll explain later," he said harshly. He once again had hit a dead end and had no way of finding out why she had left. All he had going for him was that she did go out of her way to protect those she cared about. But his question was not answered. She was glad he had never found her, but why? Was it because she was worried he would get hurt? Perhaps she knew she would die eventually, but then again she started a family with her old boyfriend, one who she was torn up about when she thought he was dead. Maybe it was something he would not like to know. He turned back to the jar shop and was ready to instruct the men surrounding the shack to follow when a piece of paper addressed to him caught his eye on the wall.

"What is that for?" Mai question as Zuko pulled the note from the wall.

"I don't know," he mumbled, unfolding the piece of parchment to read what it said. In sloppy and choppy handwriting, the paper read:

Zuko,

What you need to know is not here. You'll find out very little about the death of Hiashi by asking around. Why she left you is not important, rather, you need to concern yourself as to why she died and who killed her. You know who killed her, no doubt, and your knowledge of those who did it is amateur at best. You need to know more about them, but I must warn you, any more knowledge of them is dangerous, so you need to know these risks. I can tell you everything you need to know about them, but I also need to tell you that not only was Hiashi in danger, but so are several others, and with your knowledge, more lives can be saved, including her family, who is also in danger.

Stop focusing on why she left for now and begin focusing on why she died. I will tell you everything you need to know. If you accept this request, then be at the ocean side cliff at midnight. Bring no one. The more who know, the more who are endangered.

There was nothing more on the note. If what was being said was true he needed to go. But he was suspicious. Who knew he was here looking for information on Hiashi?

"So what are you going to do about it?" Mai asked. Zuko snapped out of his trance and truly thought about what he was going to do.

"I think," he finally answered, "I think I need to find out what is going on."

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This was indeed a short chapter, but I didn't want to taint it with anything else. Plus I updated another chapter, and both chapters are really short, so I figure that might balance them out. And as to why I didn't put them up in the same chapter, well I though they stood better alone as opposed to together, simply because it adds more drama that way. I mean, I probably could have added more, but by simply splitting them into two chapters instead of one, well, I think I already said it, it adds more drama. Plus the excitement kind of dwindles down when you know two things are going on at the same time, so you can go ahead and be all psyched because you won't know what's going on until chapter ten, but by chapter ten you'll come out of this knowing more about the Resistance, since we already knew that was coming. Once again I have a deviant art page, and if anyone would like to suggest an OC drawing or perhaps you just want to see a redrawing of another character please feel free to help me and as always please leave a review. As to Moonlight1405, I'm glad I could make you laugh ^ - ^. I try : ) . And as to bubblylady, hello and thank you for reading my story : D . Hopefully you don't regret reading it and end up killing brain cells in the process. Until next time, Signing Off!