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 Ten: Actions Against My Best Interests
'-'
"Are you really going to go over there without anyone with you?" Mai asked as Zuko sheathed himself with a dark red cloak. "I've never been here before, but all the things I've heard about Engoku are bad."
"I need to know what's going on," Zuko answered calmly. "Whoever sent that note has information for me and I can't just ignore it."
"But you don't know who sent it," she frowned. "For all you know this could be some kind of trap. They could be trying to get you alone so they can kill you."
"And who would want to kill me?" Zuko nearly shouted.
"The people who wrote that letter!" Mai answered. "Maybe they're the ones who want to kill you. They might just be luring you into a false sense of security for all you know."
"I'll be fine," Zuko reassured her, but mostly he was trying to reassuring himself. "I can watch over myself."
"Fine, but I'm going with you," she replied. Zuko shot his head up and turned to look at her sharply.
"No, you're not," he exclaimed. "You read what the note said, the more people who know… you're going to get killed. I can't have that happened."
"Zuko, I'm bored as hell here!" Mai yelled at him. "And besides, I don't need you protecting me; I can take care of myself. Also, I'm bored."
"You just said that," Zuko glowered.
"I know that," she snapped back caustically. "But I have a feeling you seriously underestimate how bored I really am."
"It's night time, why don't you go to sleep?"
"Have you slept in this ship? It's like I'm being baked alive in my room. At least out here I can breathe."
"Even if I did let you go, you'd have to be standing away so you won't be seen, which means you could get attacked—"
"Who said I was going to be hiding in the dark? You dragged me on this trip. I think I deserve to know what's going on."
"You wouldn't understand. You don't know about the Resistance."
"Resistance?" she said, taken aback. "What are you talking about? Those people who stand outside the palace waving around the old Fire Nation flag?"
"No," he answered. "This is something no one could have imagined."
"Like what?"
"If you're going with me, then you'll know." Zuko threw the hood of his cloak over his head and stalked his way over to the stairs. "Grab something dark. You don't want to be seen."
'-'
It was still muggy outside but a breeze from the ocean crept up from the waters and hit them just gently enough. The two sat in silence while they waited for the mystery person to tell them what they needed, but whoever it was, they were taking their sweet time. Surely it was getting past midnight and the both of them were beginning to feel the fatigue of the sticky weather from earlier. Zuko turned to look at Mai, who returned a look of annoyance, implying she was as ready as him to simply return to the ship and call it a night. He was ready to nod in agreement, as he, too, was tired, but a sudden rustling from the bush told him otherwise.
"I told you to come alone, Zuko," a familiar voice said from the dark. "I wouldn't call it safe for two Fire Nationals to be wandering around by themselves at night." From the darkness came a familiar silver haired woman with piercing amethyst eyes.
"You!" Zuko gasped once he had registered where he had seen her from.
She used her trademark lead pipe to hoist herself up to their level and looked towards Mai. "Why is she here?"
"She's with me," Zuko replied. "She deserves to know as much as I do."
"Aren't you the girl from earlier?" Mai asked, recognizing her as the one who dragged Doku's lifeless carcass from Sureiyaa's office.
"Gingitsune," Zuko answered her. "She's with their gang, but you're with the Resistance too?"
"For someone so educated, you are certainly dull at times," she said quietly in disgrace. "It's not hard to spot us. We all have the same eyes, whether it be Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, Water Tribe, or Air Nomad—"
"But the Air Nomad are dead," Mai interrupted. Gingitsune rolled her eyes.
"She obviously knows nothing of the Resistance," she said with the same amount of shame as she did to Zuko. "You both realize that what I'm going to tell you could cost you your lives? If I tell you this then you will be followed and you will be killed."
"Then why are you telling me this?" Zuko asked her. "What about you? Won't they kill you?"
"Yes," she answered bluntly. "But I'm tired of staying in the dark. I have a High Master I need to please and Sureiyaa who treats me like shit, it's too much for me. I'm tired of getting pushed around by everyone, so you know what? I'm done with it. And I know you're looking for information. And you'll need it."
"Start from the beginning, then," Zuko instructed. "Fill Mai in on what she doesn't know." Gingitsune turned to look out at the moon which lingered gently over the black waters. She was seemingly not cold despite the lack of clothing she wore. Maybe she was, but she seemed as if she stopped caring about everything.
"About a hundred years ago the Resistance branched off another secret society called the Order of the White Lotus, a group based of philosophy and knowledge. Ask your uncle, Zuko, he'll know. Once the war was imminent, several people from the White Lotus began saying how they should stop the Fire Nation from conquering the others. They were, after all, the most knowledgeable people in the whole world and they had not only the numbers, but the strength to do so. But the other members said no. Violence could not be solved with more violence. So those renegade members left the White Lotus and started the Universal Resistance. Each member of Resistance agrees that no one nation is superior than the other and that each nation should remain separate. The one thing they do agree on is that they all need to work together in order to remain separate. Sort of an ironic paradox.
"Anyways, whenever people hear 'resistance' they automatically think of a small ragtag team or rebels trying to take down smaller fleets, but that's far from the truth. No, the Resistance is much more complex than everyone thinks it is. From birth, each pureblooded baby is ripped away from its parents and raised as one group within their own kind. Once those who are able to bend are established from the group they are sent to training. Each child goes through three levels of training: elemental, which focuses on the main art or bending; analogous, which focuses on spreading out of the standard elements and branching to those with similar properties, like a firebender would learn how to manipulate heat and light, or a waterbender would learn how to work with plants, or an earthbender would work with metal and stuff, airbenders with noise, et cetera; and body, which pulls more into studying the human body and how each element can be used against it. You know, earthbenders with bones and minerals in the body such as iron, waterbenders with blood, plus the body's about sixty percent water, firebenders with temperature control, and airbenders controlling all forms of air in the body, especially oxygen. Each training process lasts about five years of pure commitment to the art, total of fifteen years. Those element benders who get through the training can get vocation in an array of things to assist the Resistance. You can become a physician, a foot soldier, an assassin, or a scope, like me. I keep an eye on the events and people stationed on Engoku and I help out anyone in the Resistance that needs it."
"So what happens with the kids who aren't benders?" Zuko asked.
"Well those kids are really generally raised. Sometimes they're raised and they're trained in some other form of martial arts, but about half of them are used as test dummies. See, as the element benders get older and start learning how to manipulate the human body they need to practice on someone. So if we can't afford to practice on each other or we don't have any prisoners to use we end up using them. Actually, about eight years ago when the war ended everyone on Engoku celebrated the victory in the name of the Earth Kingdom, or whatever nation won. Because most of the people here are asshole refugees, mostly everyone went on a killing spree and began to kill a lot of the Fire Nation locals. Deciding to use that to their advantage the Resistance kidnapped a lot of people from the Fire Nation and pretty much used them for practice. There's still quite a number of Fire Nationals living here, most of them neo-Anarchists who are rioting for the war again. So they're usually either killed or kidnapped by us."
"And what is this I heard about counterfeit Avatar?" Zuko asked again.
"Counterfeit Avatars?" Mai frowned.
"Oh, those," Gingitsune sighed. "Well, despite their hatred for half bloods, they have attempted to create their own through this process called in vitro fertilization. Basically they get both the sperm and the egg from two opposite elements, preferably two benders since they have a higher chance of producing a bender, and placed inside a representative who will give birth to it. Then two pairs of half bloods will go through the same thing and then hopefully produce a child who is capable of bending all elements. But only the poly benders are kept. Since they're such an abomination, anything short of what they want is killed once they can figure out what kind of benders they are."
"Wait," Zuko intervened, "if mixed blooded people are such abominations, why make them?"
"Because despite the fact that they're inferior genetic scum they serve their purpose as our ultimate weapon. People think that because the Avatar is so powerful they would automatically win a battle against any group of people. But what is one Avatar compared to seven? The only difference between them is that the actual Avatar is connected to the Spirit World, but that's about it. And in actuality, our counterfeit Avatars are mostly hydrogen benders, so they don't really control all the elements, just those that contain hydrogen, which severely limits them. People think it's easy to make a hybrid that can bend two elements, but they don't realize what goes into it.
"Bending goes hand in hand with genetics. Bending is a recessive trait generally and so two benders have a better chance of producing a bending child. However, everyone thinks that because these genetics are based on science then that means we can completely ignore the spiritual aspects of the art. But that's not the case. You see, naturally each element has its opposite. Earth and air are opposites as well as fire and water are opposite. Even the Avatar has a problem with his opposing element, you can't deny that. At first the Resistance figured they could pair up any two nations together to produce a hybrid but as it turns out several things can happen: the babies end up as a stillbirth, they die young, they are really sick, they are never benders, and, or they end up being deathly ill if they end up as a bender. Steambloods and dustbloods can't happen in nature, only magbloods, mudbloods, mistbloods, mugbloods, so that whole nonsense of even producing a crossbreed of a Fire Nation and a Water Tribe child would be out of the question, or even an Earth Kingdom and Air Nomad child."
"You keep mentioning Air Nomads," Mai intervened. "But they're all dead."
"No, they are not," Gingitsune breathed. "They are a rare breed, yes, only about two hundred of us exist—"
"You're an airbender?" Zuko quickly disrupted. Gingitsune nodded slowly.
"Our leader's an airbender as well," she added slowly. "You wouldn't think it simply because our people were raised on the idea of treating everything on this planet with respect, but with every people there are always those who fall. Like me. I'm not talking about my heritage, though. There are some of the people in the Resistance who start having doubts about why we are really doing what we're doing, but they are always killed. They are always found out because of our Wall of All Knowledge. Each person on this planet's soul is attached to it so it knows everything in the world. So if anyone were to even decide to turn renegade then it would know. And then those in charge of keeping an eye on the wall would report it to the higher ups and then those people are turned in. I haven't been turned in yet since I decided today to drop my loyalty."
"I don't believe it," Mai said suddenly.
"I don't think you understand then how horrible the Resistance is—"
"No," Mai cut her off, "I don't believe you're an airbender. I don't believe airbenders still exist. That's just a lie. A lot of what you're saying just sounds made up."
"You want me to prove it to you?" she growled. "What would you like me to show you? How about some airbending?" She swung her hand over her head and suddenly the minute breeze grew into a monsoon sized gale. "Or," she added once the wind had died down, "I can either increase the atmospheric pressure," closing in her hands as suddenly Zuko and Mai's heads began to feel heavy, "or I can decrease it," and suddenly their heavy heads began to feel light. "Or," she added, and suddenly the two of them could not breathe, "I can take air away from you altogether." Mai drew up her wrist to her throat in an attempt to remove the invisible hand but the two reacted at the same time to try and force her to let them go, but their attempts were to no avail. "Silly children," she laughed, dropping her hands and allowing them to breathe. "You can't bend fire in a vacuum and those blades can only go so far."
"Fine," Mai coughed, rubbing her windpipe. "But I doubt that was necessary." Mai seemed okay and if she was not, then she was masking it well, but Zuko could not help but feel disturbed. He had never felt so nervous before. She was attacking him from the inside without even touching him.
"What about mindbending?" Zuko asked, trying to ignore his discomforting fear.
"You mean mind manipulation? That's another thing our Resistance Youth are trained in. Starting at age ten, the children basically take classes in the human mind and how it works. Mindbending isn't anything massive, but all it does is use subliminal messages, cold readings, and the art of suggestion to basically convince anyone to do almost anything. We're good enough that we can leave a bag with a thousand gold pieces in it on the streets of Engoku for a week without anyone taking it."
"And what's the point of learning how to do that?" Mai questioned.
"We get people to do what we want," she answered simply. "Other times we do it because we don't want people getting too curious. Let's say someone begins asking too many questions, I could simply subliminally suggest they stop asking, or even make them forget what they were talking about altogether. No tricks, just mental suggestions."
"That sounds a little ridiculous."
"You know," Gingitsune said suddenly, "do you know much about toothaches? It's very interesting, what happens is that the whole area of the nerve," she described, bringing her fist to her jaw and shaking it violently, "right here at the base of the jaw, right here," she pointed out to Mai and Zuko, repeating her action on either side of their jaw, "would go bad, right in there. You must've had a really bad toothache, the first sort of tingling feeling, I mean, what's it like, Mai? How would you describe toothache pain?"
"Constant pain, I guess," she answered slowly, her hand moving up to where Gingitsune had touched her. As if from nowhere, Zuko's mouth began to prickle with a sensation he had never felt before. He, too, reached up for his jaw where Gingitsune had pointed out. The sensation began to increase exponentially, so slightly at first but suddenly morphing into a pain equivalent to a cramping muscle, only it was in his mouth, much more sharp, and no way to relieve it.
"You can feel it, can't you?" Gingitsune asked the two of them. Zuko clenched his jaw and nodded. "You're genuinely feeling that now?"
"Yes," Mai replied sharply.
"So do you think this is the kind of pain that can't spread?" she asked, brushing her hands on the opposite side where she had not touched and suddenly the two felt the pain not only in one spot, but their entire jaw had suddenly been engulfed by the sharpening pain. "Then it gets worse," she added as the pain increased, "and worse," as the pain became unbearable, "and then, suddenly…
"It stops," she said calmly, clapping her hands loudly together. As if she had blown out a candle, the pain was suddenly gone from their mouths. "Now stop questioning me. What I am telling you is absolutely true. None of this can be made up! What, did you really think violet eye occur naturally in nature? Or how about grey hair at the age of ten? I doubt that's natural!"
"What did they do to you?" Zuko asked quietly.
"You think our war was bloody," Gingitsune laughed almost insanely. "You've never been there before, Zuko, but Hiashi has. There was a planet, called Earth, they were in the same position as we were eight years ago. While our war lasted for a hundred years, theirs lasted for a measly six. Don't ask me how time works with these things, I honestly don't know, but about twenty years ago several Fire Nation soldiers tried to infiltrate our headquarters. Of course they all died, but they had disguised themselves as members of the Resistance. We couldn't have that happen again, but it was so easy for people to come in disguise we would never be able to tell each other apart. So several of our members went out of our world to search for a way we could solve this little problem. One of our members, on Earth, managed to stumble across something so grizzly it made our war look like a party game. This country by the name of 'Germany' started a war for world conquest, just like the Fire Nation had, and had begun sending all those who they considered inferior into these camps—"
"Prison camps?" Mai asked.
"You only wish they were prison camps. No, these were death camps, specifically designed to kill masses of people as quickly as possible. They would import people into these camps and by the hundreds, groups of men, women, and even children were either gassed to death or simply cremated alive. Yes, it is a fact," she added to their look of horror, "but in their cases I think a quick thirty minute death would have been a much better fate compared to those deemed worthy of survival. Those who weren't automatically killed were literally worked to death. Little food was given to these workers on top of twelve hour work day, ghastly living conditions, and on top of it all, human experiment. You see, one of our members managed to come across a camp where a doctor by the name of Joseph Mengele was running experiments on humans for a gamut of things. He was an awful man and why we as a Resistance decided to do nothing about it will forever claw at me, but one of his experiments was attempting to alter eye color by injecting different chemicals into the eye. All his experiments failed and ended up leaving most of his victims dead, but the man who saw this decided to work from where Mengele had left off. About ten years later the chemical had been perfected and each member of the Resistance was injected with the serum. It turns your eyes purple and technically it's supposed to turn your hair black, but with some of us the proteins in the serum damage hair proteins, turning our hair this sickly grey color. I don't know if you'd believe me if I told you I use to have brown hair and grey eyes, but that doesn't matter now. I've run my course here."
"But—"
"I tried to help Hiashi, I did, Zuko. I told her about the Resistance. I didn't go into any detail about it, simply that there was an organization of rebels where she would really be protected, but she refused. I didn't know what else to do so I let her go. I was supposed to help someone else kill her, but I couldn't do it. I got in a lot of trouble for foiling her assassination, but they deemed my involvement as an accident since I was supposed to be undercover anyways and to protest with Sureiyaa about selling her information to Admiral Zhao, well that would blow my cover. But she survived and I knew she would since those two were firebenders. It wasn't a great fate, but she managed to live almost another ten years. You already know the Resistance killed her, but I have to tell you this too, they are after her family now. Her children, her husband, I know you don't like them, but they're next. And there is someone else in danger, but you'll need their help most of all. You know exactly who I'm talking about. You'll have to head over there next."
"So you're not going to help?" Mai asked her.
"I already said my course has run," she answered quietly, walking slowly to the ledge of the cliff they were on. "I can't help you anymore than I've helped you now."
"Gingitsune," Zuko said sharply as he jumped to his feet, "what are you doing?"
"You best be vigilant, Fire Lord Zuko," she simply said, turning to face him. "They are after you, too."
"Gingitsune!" Zuko barked but he was suddenly overcome with the same feeling as earlier of being unable to breathe, only it was much more severe.
"Don't try and fix what's not broken," she said to him. "But I implore you to remember this: You cannot fight fire with fire. You must… fight fire… with water…" She let go of his throat and without hesitation, she let herself fall backwards, into the jagged knives and sharp blackness of the rocks and ocean below, leaving only her lead pipe behind.
'-'
This was mostly an insightful chapter so you can get a better idea of the Resistance and what goes on, but I do understand it got a little dark towards the end, but I have to say I like darkness, it makes it easier to sleep. Actually I had an epic dream the other night that gave me the best idea for my story! Not this story, the other one I've been talking about (no one knows what I'm talking about…). Although I'd have to see if it would even work out. NEHO, Moonlight1405, I have no idea who you thought it was, but seeing as how I am very bad at suspense, I would have to guess you thought it was Gingitsune? I have no idea… As always, please review and I also have a deviant art page. Haven't added anything in a while, except to my scrapbook, but that's about it. And like I say, if you have a request for an OC, a redrawing of an OC, or simply have a drawing request feel free to tell me. Until next time, Signing Off.
ALSO! Remember the following terms: steambloods, dustbloods, magbloods, mudbloods, mistbloods, and mugbloods? These are all references to a different pair of nationalities. Try and guess which is which! (Like Fire Nation/ Water Tribe, Earth Kingdom/ Air Nomad, Fire Nation/ Earth Kingdom, Earth Kingdom/Water Tribe, etc.) Just for fun, see if you can guess them!