Enjoy!

Warrior Raging

Chapter 7

Police and healers arrived quickly. Tenzin was rushed to the hospital and, though Lin was desperate to follow, she remained at the scene to oversee the investigation. The four injured men – three, truly; she had felt one of them die already even if the healers on site were not saying so – followed to the hospital for care after being placed under immediate arrest.

The street was a mess. The cobbles and paving stones were in complete ruin and the car, which she had thrown at the start, had actually rolled during the fight to hit a building and break the shop's window. She hadn't heard the shatter, but then she had been far too distracted to notice. Blood was spattered across the ground, some of it hers though most having spilled from the men she had been defending Tenzin against. Thankfully none was his.

"Chief?"

Lin turned her head to see Della coming tentatively to her side, a concerned expression on her face. "Are you all right?" she asked. "There are still some healers here, I can get one for you. I mean, your neck is bleeding, and your cheek, too -"

"I'm fine," Lin interrupted softly, watching as two Metalbenders pulled the Satomobile upright. It was a lie, but she wasn't going to say so. Her body ached terribly, growing worse by the minute, and she could feel bruises forming under her armor. But Tenzin – Tenzin was safe. He was all right, and that was the only thing that mattered to her. Overwhelming love for him flared through her for a strong second before exhaustion pushed all other emotion out of her mind.

She walked away to get a closer look at the automobile, leaving Della to take several quick steps to catch up. It was crushed and hardly appeared anything near its former glory, but she peered inside in the hopes any nooks and crannies hadn't been too badly destroyed. The glove box had popped open and she used a gesture with her bending to pull the door all the way open. It was empty, though, as was the rest of the car.

"Search everything," she said. "Pull it apart piece by piece. I want you to note every little thing you find, however small or insignificant it may seem."

Two hours of photographs, notations, and speaking with officers later, Lin finally approved the final cleanup of the scene. The Satomobile and all its parts were removed, a paver came in to begin repairing the road, a cleaner came to wash away the blood, and the shopkeeper showed up to assess the damage to his store just as a stonemason responded to fix that damage. The street would be good as new by sunrise, as though this never happened.

xXx

Lin leaned back in the chair behind her desk, closing her eyes tightly and attempting to bring herself back together. It was nearing eight o'clock in the morning. She hadn't slept, but she didn't exactly feel as though she wanted to. Before returning to the precinct, she had stopped by the hospital to check on Tenzin. He had still been unconscious, but his healer said he was fine and would wake in another few hours.

The cloth the men had covered over his face had also been found and, according to the healer's analysis when he had been brought in and from what was found on that fabric, she told Lin it looked to be a very concentrated herbal concoction used to knock a person cold that had likely come from a much larger batch, created over a long period of time. Inhaling as much as he did, Tenzin had simply passed out. All the men needed to do was hold him still long enough – really, only a few seconds – for it to work.

A bit more subtle than the Equalists' gloves and just as dangerous. It infuriated her.

"Chief?"

She opened her eyes and lowered her head to see Hutou bowing her in doorway, a tray with two teacups filled with steaming tea held in his hands. "Lang has been brought into the meeting room for you, ma'am."

Lin got to her feet, coming around her desk to take the tray. One cup was filled with her own black tea, the other with a fine fragrant jasmine, overly dark for a white tea and scaled to her – and her mother's – direction. She took the brass coin with her mother's marking from her desktop and set it by her cup. "Thank you, Hutou. Please direct Della to wait for me to call on her."

The precinct was just starting to buzz with activity. Many officers and detectives paused what they were doing as she passed, most with concerned or confused expressions, but she didn't pay them any mind as she walked toward the room Della had set Lang up in. She would make an announcement to all of them as a whole later in the day, explaining what had happened overnight once she had more information herself. For now she had one goal – speak to this man who had kept his tongue tied.

She balanced the tray on the palm of one hand and let herself inside. This room was not an interrogation cell by any means, instead set up with comfortable chairs and an elegant wooden table. Detectives met with families and loved ones in here, giving both bad news and good.

Lang was sitting in one of the chairs, arms resting on his knees as he hunched over himself. He glanced up when the door opened and watched warily as Lin set the tray on the table, gesturing kindly for him to join her when she sat. Hesitating for only a moment, he left his current chair for one closer to her and she handed him the jasmine tea before taking her own black tea into her hands.

She was silent as he brought the cup to his lips, watching with a cool gaze as he took a sip. His gaze shot up to hers the moment the liquid met his tongue.

"Do you know who I am, Mister Lang?" she asked innocently, no acidity to the question. It was the first time they had spoken face to face, and the first time he had met her at all. He nodded slowly, saying her name out loud. "She – the woman who used to make this tea for you – is not coming back to the city. But I am here now, and I will protect you the same way she did. Do you understand?" He nodded again and she narrowed her eyebrows slightly. "Will you trust me the way you trust her?"

"Yes."

She picked up the coin he had given to her only a few days ago, looking at it one last time, and handed it back to him. His aged hands closed around it gratefully. "Will you tell me why you were in the bar that morning?"

Lang stared up at her, his dark brown eyes showing a hint of fear, but he took a deep breath and set his cup on the table. "I live upstairs," he said. "The owner – he doesn't charge me rent. A kind man, he is. Fen Tao is his name. Been friends for thirty years. I was – I was downstairs the night before – I have a problem, you see – with drink -"

"It's all right, Mister Lang." Lin put her hand on his wrist when she noticed him begin to falter, his face falling with despair. "Tell me whatever you can."

"I was drinking," he continued, gaze downcast. "The bar was closed, it was Fen Tao's birthday, it was only us and his wife, the three of us celebrating. Sometime late, after one in the morning, I think – there was banging on the door. A ramming sound, angry-like. Fen Tao, he told me to go get some more whiskey. I was drunk, but I could tell he was…was upset about something. His wife went with him to the door, I don't think she knew what was going on.

"There was shouting – a lot of shouting." He paused and lowered his head into his hands. "I don't remember much more than that," he told her sadly, "I must have passed out at some point. At least, I knew not to move while – while that was going on. Maybe the fear…"

"How do you know it was the Dragon Clan?" Lin asked.

"Fen Tao, he was saying something about not helping them, about how they were ruining the city and refusing to take back his word. And then – and then the most horrible sound – I can't – that was when I -" He stopped speaking abruptly and this time Lin did not ask another question.

"I'm going to keep you here," she said instead, "where you'll be safe until this is over."

"Thank you," he murmured, unable to look up again.

Lin rose from the table, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder before leaving the room. Della was waiting for her in the hall and Lin beckoned for her to join her back in her office. The detective pushed away from the wall and took several steps to keep up with her pace. Lin didn't speak until she was sitting behind her desk, and even then she took a deep breath to steady herself as she continued to absorb everything she had just been told.

It was only another second, though, before she turned her focus to Della. "Were you able to get full identifications on both the victims?" she asked.

Della sat in the chair on the other side of her desk and held out the file she'd been carrying. "Yes," she said. "The man was Fen Tao, the owner. He lived in the building with his wife, Puya, the woman who was killed. They've lived in Republic City for thirty-four years, before that in Ba Sing Se. Not wealthy, but not broke either. No connection to organized crime that I could find, but Puya does have a brother who was arrested in Omashu and sent to Ba Sing Se to serve his prison sentence."

"What was he arrested for?" Lin flipped through the several sheaves of paper.

"Murder, was the biggest charge," Della answered, screwing her face up in disgust, "but he was also charged with attempting to traffic illegal substances. It didn't work out well for him, he was caught before anything was even started."

Lin nodded, finding the page with the criminal record and glancing through it. She pulled the form out and set it on top of the others, figuring it might be important to look at again with a fresh eye. "Wonderful work, Della, thank you."

"Oh, and Chief?"

She looked up from the file, tired eyes finding Della's anxious ones. "Those two men, who we arrested last night? They were released from the hospital, Mako, Jaluu, and a few others brought them into custody while you were speaking with Lang. They're refusing to talk to us, but they're in the cells downstairs."

"Two?" Lin repeated, almost thinking for a moment she had misheard. "There were three men."

"Yes, ma'am – two. The other died, also."

Two survived to be brought in. Which meant Lin had taken the lives the other two, without even realizing what she was doing. Her gaze unfocused off Della's face, her body going numb.

xXx

The city's morgue was in the basement of the hospital, a long, chilly floor with icy walls and cold water pumped through the piping to keep the temperature down. Several large rooms branched off the main brightly lit hallway but Lin didn't stop at any of these as she made her way to the examination room at the far end. Master Yol had called her just minutes before, finally letting her know she could come view the bodies of the two men she had killed what seemed like a lifetime ago – even if it hadn't yet been a full twelve hours since the fight in the street.

Yol poked her head out into the hall, her pale face pulled into a no-nonsense expression that actually gave Lin a small bit of comfort. She liked this woman, she took her job seriously and didn't give a bear dog's ass what people thought of her living.

"I thought that was you, Chief Beifong," she said, her deep voice hitting the ice around them and falling flat. "Come on, I still have them out."

Lin followed her into the cavernous room she had come from, immediately seeing two men laid out on metal tables near the wall. She recognized the Waterbender, whom she had felt die as she tended to Tenzin, but she was startled to see a young Earthbender beside him – not the man she had stabbed, but the one she had thrown. "Do you -" The words caught in her throat and she swallowed quickly before continuing. "Do you know who they are? Has anyone claimed kin?"

Yol nodded. "This young man, here," she pointed to the Earthbender, "he has a sister, she's coming to see him this afternoon but we're not releasing his body yet. His name is Peiji, she says. The other – we don't know, still unclaimed and unnamed. There is something you might find interesting, though, Chief."

She beckoned Lin to the end of the tables, toward the men's feet, and reached for the big toe on Peiji's right foot. "See this?" She pointed to a small red dot imprinted on the skin along the side of the toe. "I thought it was a blister or perhaps a freckle at first, but both have one. Well, actually, unnamed over there has five to this boy's one."

Lin studied the dot on the Earthbender's foot for several seconds and moved to take the other man's right foot into her hand, examining the same toe. Five tiny dots formed a close line away from the nail. "This looks like a tattoo," she murmured, thinking out loud.

"My opinion, as well," Yol said simply. "The red ink was probably made from clay, or perhaps some kind of herb. It's a very vibrant color, but I still almost missed it."

"Thank you, Master Yol," Lin said softly, already making her way to the door.

She paused, though, and turned back to look at the two men again, both dead by her own hands. The unknown Waterbender was clearly in his forties, toughened and a seasoned fighter. Peiji, the Earthbender – he couldn't have been a day over twenty, still a child somehow caught up in a mess far over his head and now unable to right his mistakes. He had fallen so easily against her and she hadn't stopped for a second in her rage to protect Tenzin to consider how badly she may have hurt him.

"How did he die?" she asked suddenly.

Yol glanced over at her and, noticing the direction of her gaze, frowned slightly. "The angle of his plummet broke his neck. He didn't suffer, Chief, if that's what you're wondering. His death was abrupt on impact."

It hadn't been, and the information did not calm the illness rising in her stomach.