...

Xiaobao and his fellow dockworker-turned-neighborhood-watchman crept through the dark closer to Miohuito's train-yard. It had been several minutes since they had seen the shadowy figures force their way inside. Li was swaying back and forth slightly with nervous energy as they waited. Through a tiny gap in the now open gate Xiaobao saw several people moving inside the yard. The beam of the vandals' hooded lantern washed over vague shapes of steel and iron in front of long factory buildings.

He turned to Li. "It's ok. Chouyu is going to get the help we sent him for soon enough. And what are these guys going to do in the meantime, smash some windows? I don't think there's more than five of them or so. Worst comes, they start a fire and then hightail it. We can start yelling for a bucket line in an instant and stop it before it spreads."

Li nodded nervously and stayed by Xiaobao's side. Now all Xiaobao needed to do was reassure himself.

He groaned as he caught sight of a new flickering orange light spilling out through the cracks in the gate. Those people were in fact lighting fires. Those damn Lower Ring rabble did not care if the whole Harbor Town burnt down. Then he heard the sound of running footsteps down the street behind him. Xiaobao turned to see Chouyu returning with five other men from another of the ad-hoc watch posts. Chouyu was panting as he came up to Xioabao and Li but he too recognized that orange light from inside the train-yard soon enough.

He whispered loudly enough to make Xiaobao wince. "Oh damn it. Not more fires!"

Xiabao turned back. No one had exited the train-yard yet. Those fools must be sticking around to maximize the damage of their arson. Well, that meant he had no choice. Xiaobao straitened up and squared his shoulders. The other men saw him retrieve the empty bottle from where it was tucked in his belt and they at once both sighed in resignation and bristled in building machismo. They were all dock workers and were used to moving crates heavy enough to crush an unwary man. Any warren-dwelling citizen from the rings would look twice at eight such men coming at them out of the dark. None of them had high hopes for the city guards responding on a festival night and if they did such officials would consider flattening six blocks of houses in this neighborhood to be an acceptable loss to contain a fire. No, this was a job for local men.

Xiaobao smiled faintly that he did not have to say a single word to psych these men into preparing for action. Everyone in the Harbor had heard of some of the recent Lower Ring fires that seemed to be springing up every day this last week. No one wanted that here, even if they did not believe the rumors of the fire being magical. Trying to project confidence he did not feel, Xiaobao strode forward and put one large calloused hand on the train-yard gate. It was unlocked now. Well, there was no going back now. He pushed it open with enough force that it banged against the compound wall and started swinging back closed again.

As Xiaobao stepped through the gate he puffed out his chest and yelled into the night. "All right, you bastards! We don't know who you are and we don't really care, but you lot have got about one gull's flap to get out of here before we let you know just what kind of lads live down here where you're starting fires! If I were you I would take advantage of this generous offer!"

The interior of Mister Miohuito's train compound was primarily composed of two large warehouses or factories and a number of small outbuilding scattered around an open yard filled with piles of long metal bars and shadowed hulks of unidentifiable machinery. One of the smaller overseer's huts, possibly housing some records, was already ablaze and by its light the dockworkers saw several men frozen in the open warehouse doorway. These intruders were better dressed than the normal Lower Ring sort typically involved in random destruction. That was more worrisome, these might be genuine politicals. Xiaobao made sure that the other longshoremen moved with him over to the side of the entrance to provide the arsonists with a clear path of escape. There was nothing more dangerous than accidentally leaving a man no exit but through you.

One of the fire-starting intruders swore loudly as he turned to call back into the building behind him.

"We've got company! Not government but there's a lot!"

His companion in the wide warehouse doorway said to him. "I don't like the looks of this. These louts look like business."

"And yet you were the one who was against putting them on from the beginning."

"Have you tried yours recently? Something's gone wrong. It was... I felt dizzy and afterwards there were parts where I could not remember exactly what happened. From what I've heard, highest have not used theirs in weeks; I don't think they know something is changing."

"And did you think that this power we've been entrusted with would be easy? I'm not surprised that someone a weak as you is being found unworthy."

"But I can feel it watching me now even from across the room, it..."

"Um, hey!" Xiaobao interrupted. The bickering men seemed to have abruptly forgotten that they were being menaced. "You all need to get out of here right now. We aren't buddies with the Islanders any more than the next guy but the guards are already on their way." That might have been a lie but these men did not need to know that possibility.

"And if you don't hurry out the greenies are going to find you with the favorite part of their job already done." He smacked his bottle weapon on the palm of his other hand to emphasize his point. He hoped it did not come to that. What he had just heard those men muttering made him uneasy.

Behind him several of the dockworkers had found improvised weapons in the form of what looked like a large pile of short metal belaying pins. They were either that or someone had required several hundred metal chisel spikes for something. In any case Xiaobao thought that the overall image his friends presented was more intimidating than these vandals were giving them credit for. He looked to his side and nodded to Li. He could see orange flickers from inside that warehouse. The one burning shed was safely contained by isolation in the yard but these men had already started other fires further in. The fire bells were not ringing yet and he had no idea if the guards would actually listen to Chouyu's message. But they could not let these fires spread to the neighborhood.

Someone in Xiaobao's group took a step forward. In an instinctive reaction nearest vandal reached towards a satchel he had hanging at his side.

The mystery intruder growled to his comrade, "Well I didn't join this thing to get my head caved in by some mud-sucking farm dwellers. We have our gods on our side! The power of true patriotism means none of us will risk arrest and these pitiful things will not even touch us. Nothing will interfere with our grand purpose!" He reached into that bag and drew forth a wooden mask.

Li laughed and it was only half nervousness. "Ha, these guys really are cracked! Sure, get dressed up all you like! You're still going to find yourself face down in a canal!"

Xiaobao caught his hand on Li's shoulder. He had seen those masks before. He had seen men like that take down genuine earthbenders. Ayika thought there was power there and from the glimpses Xiaobao had managed to catch he was inclined to agree. These guys were more serious than he had thought if they had those kind of masks in their bags.

Still, he did not want to fight them, just get them to leave. If they used the masks to do so then more power too them. The two other vandals Xiaobao could see nervously drew forth their own masks, backlit from the growing fire within the warehouse. Then Xiaobao heard something land on top of the compound wall behind him. A small dark mass streaked through the night air and impacted one of the vandals, knocking the mask out of his hands. Xiaobao spun around and saw a single dark robed human figure perched on the lip of the train-yard wall behind the longshoremen. It was Ma'er. The rogue bender was panting as he held his fist still extended from his earth projectile strike.

Xiaobao yelled out to him, "You! Seriously, are you following me?!"

Ma'er did not respond. Instead he punched out again and a chunk of the brick wall beside him exploded outwards to fly at the remaining arsonists. Its primary target caught the lightning fast projectile in his hand. The motion was arrested so abruptly that a spray of dust was blasted off the brick so that they would have hit the man's face. However, those fragments now hit the Mask. Red painted wood snarled in a frozen grin above carved white fangs as bits of clay rattled off. A dim yellow light gleamed in the eyeholes.

The other vandal stepped back and looked at the mask in his own hands. There was something that seemed like regret in his expression. Regret mixed with fear.

"Right. But only to complete our mission and get out of here without any casualties. We are the defenders of the people." He was speaking only to himself as he raised the mask up to his face.

Xiaobao had seen members of the initiated put on the masks before but now something was different. Before, in the Gaoli warehouse and on the Fifth Hill the mask wearers had seemed stronger, faster, and more talented; as if each wooden artifact held hundreds of hours of training. Now the entire posture and presence of these men changed. As each man placed on their mask a shudder washed over their entire bodies. Their heads hung forward like hunched beasts. Their hands flexed open and closed in a constant patterns, the tendons standing out under the skin like taught ropes. Their masked heads whipped from side to side as if sensing some invisible presence in the air.

But those changes in demeanor was not what made the neighborhood watch step back. That was not what made Xiaobao regret all the decisions he had made tonight, decisions that had placed these men, his friends, in danger. The magic of the Masks was now visible. There was a colored haze drifting around where the masks touched the vandal's skin. If shadows could have hue and be cast without light then it would be that which now lay across these men's figures. Then Xiaobao looked down at the long shadows that were cast by the real fire's in the warehouse behind the Masks. Those shadows no longer looked like those of men and they danced to the same strange rhythms of the fires which was now beginning to pulse with an unknown power.

"Colored shadows like smoke." Up on the wall Ma'er's back sagged with weariness. "The Tribal girl said so. Well, now I can see it too." He called down. "Boy! Get your friends out of here! You can not win this fight!"

Xiaobao opened his mouth as the leading Mask threw the brick he had caught back the way it had come. Xiaobao could hear its speed crackling in the air just as he heard the sickening crunch as it hit old Chouyu in the chest. The man disappeared from his place in the line of dockworkers. If one instant he was there, in the next a crumpled shape was hitting the ground behind them. Then an inhuman roar rose up as more masked shapes of men burst forth from the burning warehouse. Xiaobao slowly turned back. The ground before him erupted upwards in surging columns of dirt propelled by the earthbender on the wall. All he had wanted was to protect his friends and their homes. As he fell backward he saw Ma'er launch himself above to join the fight. He had just wanted to protect people.

...