...
The instant the earthbending adepts allowed the tram to grind to a halt at Kuang Harbor station Xinfei threw open the the Nobles Car's door before the attendant could reach it. Lili's golden passport had gotten them into the premium carriage but the first class moved no faster than the other car. Right now Xinfei could not bear to be moving so slowly. The Initiated were planning some big display in the Harbor Town tonight. Maolin was out there somewhere leading his stupid neighborhood watch program and Xinfei knew his brother. At the first hint of trouble Maolin would be running towards it; straight towards the Masks' "big mission". Xinfei's sandals slapped across the tram station's smooth stone until he skidded to a halt at the top of the grand staircase down to the town streets below.
Since the elevated terminal had only pillars along its sides instead of walls, from here Xinfei had an almost uninterrupted view of Kuang Harbor. He searched for any evidence of trouble, however, during the Festival of Veils the entire area was an eruption of riotous light and commotion. Laughter and music from below mingled with delighted screams and the pop of cheap firecrackers. To the south the silent towers of the Exclusion glowed bright and red as always. There was no way to determine where the Initiated were planning to strike. Xinfei cursed himself that he hadn't asked his brother where he was going to be posted tonight. Then something touched Xinfei's shoulder and he jolted in surprise only to see Lili's sympathetic hand laid against his arm.
"Don't worry," she said. "We'll find Xiaobao. All we need to do is-"
Lili was suddenly silenced by Xinfei's fingers pressed against her lips. He eyes went wide in astonishment but Xinfei wasn't looking at her. He was listening to something drifting in over the night air.
The noise was faint and distant but every resident of the Impenetrable City learned at an early age the sound of the fire bells. That was the third district station, ringing in double peals to signal its south was in danger. Xinfei remembered the last time he'd heard those bells, when the Masks had set the Gaoli warehouse on fire. Now it was happening again.
"The fire bells. That's where he'll be."
Xinfei dashed off down the long flight of stairs filled with purpose and determination. Lili distractedly touched a finger to her own lips before jolting back to attention and running after him down and into the milling festival crowd that celebrated their holiday oblivious to the masked danger lurking somewhere among them.
...
Xiaobao heard the clanging of fire bells in a distant way over the jumbled ringing in his own head.
He thought to himself, "Oh good, someone saw the smoke."
This might have been accompanied by some slightly more sensible thoughts if he had not just been tossed backwards onto the ground with enough force to send him sliding several body lengths. As it was he could barely make sense of the commotion that reigned around him. Fighting dizziness, Xiaobao leveraged himself up off the ground of the train-yard and tried to focus his vision on the fight taking place around him. Then he instantly had to raise up an arm to shield his eyes from a spray of dirt.
Ma'er was fighting the Masks and in this open nonresidential location he appeared to be holding nothing back. With a kick of his foot the ground before him erupted into a sudden spike of earth leaping up to strike a Mask who had been darting towards him in the weaving path of a hunting dog chasing a fleeing deer. Ma'er's power would have been more impressive if the Mask had not caught the elemental pillar in his hands just before it impacted his chest and instead used that lethal force to launch himself gracefully back through the air and land on the train factory roof. That glowing blue Mask instantly vanished into the smoke that was beginning to rise from the fires his fellows had started inside the building, off to some other mischief. Over the ringing in his ears, Xiaobao registered that there was something odd about how this fire was acting. It was something visible on a grand scale that was missing in the small lantern-flames he normally saw.
Ma'er stamped the ground to launch up another rock as a projectile but he was then forced to spin and use that same weapon to fend off another of the Masks who came racing forward. The Mask was hunched forward, his fingers dragging in the dirt like scraping swords as he ran.
Xiaobao scrabbled to his feet. A quick glance at his longshoremen friends huddled against the wall showed them to be battered but so far only poor Chouyu had been been hit directly. Li was crouched at the old man's side and Xiaobao didn't need to catch Li's eyes to know what he must have discovered. In the center of the yard, Ma'er was still holding back the Masks but his styles of earthbending relied on a level of mobility and concealment that this open testing track didn't allow him. The talk of fleeing the vandals had mentioned before putting on the masks was now forgotten. Now all Ma'er's magical power was barely fending off his attackers. Those attackers did not even look human. When the mask wearers moved from the blazing firelight to the nighttime shadows, a colored glow seemed to stick to them, like some other sort of creature was walking around within these men's skin. Monsters, who had just struck down old Chouyu and were trying to burn down all their homes.
Xiaobao felt sick. His stomach clenched and every limb felt tight and shaking. He heard a pounding in his head and his jaw ached with tension. He knew he ought to run but his vision was fixed on the snarling Masks who dashed around Ma'er's constantly shifting earthen fortifications. For a man as easygoing and gentle as Xiaobao, it was hard to recognize what true fury felt like.
These Masks had not spoken a single intelligible word since they donned their artifacts but then again they didn't need much coordination here. Ma'er presented a clear target and four of them attacking at once meant the fleet bender had no opportunity to run. There was an aura of unfocused playfulness to their vicious assault. That might have been why the shortest circling Mask was so surprised when a powerful arm suddenly struck him from behind hard enough to knock him off his feet. Of course with all the power surging through those faintly glowing limbs the Mask's recovery was the matter of in instant. Or it would have been, if in that brief instant a large calloused hand had not gripped onto his ankle and begun to swing his entire body up through the air. Then the hand let go and the Mask tumbled sideways through the night and impacted the metal side of the large demonstration train engine with a thud that seemed to ring out over the even the sounds of Ma'er's earthbending.
Xiaobao panted as he saw his target fall down to the ground once more. All the strength in the world couldn't help you if you where given nothing to push off of. It had been a good throw. He just wished that blue masked man didn't climb back up to his feet so quickly. The Mask seemed unsteady, shaken by the blow he had suffered but all the same he threw his head back and let out a screech that couldn't have been made by human lungs. Then it charged straight forward. Xiaobao knew his limits. He was big and had as many muscles as any man who worked for his living, but he wasn't fast. The Blue Mask moved like lightning and all Xiaobao could do was center his weight and try to meet it. He had no real hope.
"Xiaobao, down!"
Instinct carved into his bones by an industry that routinely saw limbs crushed by swinging crates took over and Xiaobao dropped to the ground. The Blue Mask had a moment to register confusion at the sudden appearance of another figure whose approach had been hidden behind Xiaobao's bulk. Then that moment was over and the Mask's attention was instead consumed by the meter-long metal girder that carried through with its arching swing against the side of his head. For the second time the Mask was flying sideways.
Li dropped the reverberating pole from his pained hands. "Damn the...Argh! Xiaobao get up!"
Xiaobao quickly pushed up off the dirt and leapt back into his feet. "Thanks, but Li, you killed him!" It didn't take a scholar to calculate the power that had been at the tip of that swing. Glowing magical masks and fear for their lives were the mother of all extenuating circumstances but the guards had a nasty way of applying the law very equally when it came to the towns outside the city wall. Anything could be called murder. Xiaobao could not help but think of the danger Li had exposed himself to for his sake.
Then Li's face blanched, but not for thought of legal consequences.
"What is that thing?!"
Xiaobao spun back and saw the man in the Blue Mask scrape his hand against the dirt. Instead of being shortened by one smashed head the Mask was whole and was slowly recovering on the ground. As they watched, the Mask managed to draw one arm under his chest and began to leverage himself up. Then from his half prone position he twisted his head around to stare back with inhuman anger and glowing green light.
The blue mask was still there and it was still a simple piece of wood, but within those eyeholes those were not the eyes of a man. Xiaobao saw only a shifting boiling mass like an angry storm sewer given life. It was staring back at him.
"Get the guys out of here," Xiaobao said to Li as he involuntarily stepped back. The sounds of the fight behind him had changed. He glanced around to see that Ma'er had taken advantage of the distraction the boys had provided him. What had been a pitched fight in the middle of the open yard was now an explosive pursuit as both forces launched themselves around the factory grounds, each propelled by their own differing magic. Streams of bricks smashed against the ground as the Masks just barely dodged the earthbender who refused to be caught at close quarters again. In fact, the Masks were now hampering their own actions just as much as Ma'er was. Several had abruptly stopped in their chase curiously examine some common tool, or to engage in some pointless destruction of a random table or wall. There was something scrambled about these men's minds.
Xiaobao knew he could be wrong but it seemed like the longer they had the masks on the more the attackers were loosing focus. Now was the time to leave. The Blue Mask would not be down for long and that one at least was not likely to forget them.
"Sun! Lasu! Grab Chouyu and get back! Now, before they-!"
He was interrupted by a voice from outside the gate to the factory yard.
It was some unknown person talking quite loudly. "Damn it, sounds like we've got someone here before us. Well, we got the word out to organize a bucket line so let's see what we...What the-?!"
The main gates were pushed open the rest of the way and a very confused fire brigade entered a scene out of a shadow opera. One of three factory buildings was halfway up in flames while two other small outbuildings were also blazing with strange fires that seemed to be obeying some law other than those that normally governed the world as the flames danced around in a seeming effort to escape. In this unearthly light, dimly glowing figures darted and leapt and smashed through wooden walls in pursuit of an earthbender that moved like the most dangerous sort of Public Safety agent but was barely protecting his own skin with massive eruptions of earth and brick. Then the Blue Mask off to the side finished getting to his feet and let out a howl like a surging rapids of screeching metal.
The Fire Captain turned so quickly that his earthbender badged hat flew off his balding head. "Kings and Gods! What is that-!?"
The Blue Mask's attention whipped to focus on the newcomers and it stalked forward on unsteady feet, settling into the slowly advancing pace of a hunting cat approaching an unaware lizard. The fire crew now saw the colored aura clinging to the Mask's back and their confusion had transformed into fear. They screamed and the Mask pounced.
It sprang forward only to be abruptly stopped by a shoulder-check to the side. Xiaobao skidded to a halt as he sent his foe flying and rubbed at his upper arm while he yelled to the fire crew. "For the love of...Get away!"
The Blue Mask was on the ground agin shaking its head trying to recover its equilibrium but the fire brigade's arrival had drawn the attention of others. Two more Masks emerged from a factory building where they had been causing some random destruction to curiously regard the newcomers. Driven by some ill-considered civic pride, the Fire Captain settled into a bending stance aimed at them. It might have been menacing if he was not shaking with fear.
Several of the longshoremen now seized an opportunity of their own represented by the briefly prone Blue Mask lying on the ground before them. A metal railway spike clonked against the Blue Mask's head repeatedly and four burly men leapt forward to each seize a temporarily uncoordinated limb. Someone with a good measure of sense reached out to try and rip the mask of this man's face but it was stuck on by something more than string, and no amount of pulling could remove it. Then there was a fish-gutting knife at the Blue Mask's throat.
"Stop right there!" Lasu yelled out to the other Masks across the yard as he twitched the knife against their captive's windpipe. "One more step forward and your buddy here gets to die for country! All right! Now we're going to walk out of here and then you can go kill all the benders you want!"
"Hey!" The Fire Captain took offense to those terms even as several of his terrified crew reflexively nodded their heads in agreement.
Whatever response Lasu had hoped for, it was likely not the one he received.
A distant booming laugh rang out, echoing as if coming from deep stone tunnel despite the case that the source was clearly the Mask standing only twenty paces in front of them. An otherworldly voice spoke with the sound of grinding stone and the breath of living mountains.
"Try, human," said the Mask from behind its carved face of green and gold. "Curiosity begs the answer. The night still lasts but what are the parameters of these doorways? With every passing of the sun champion's influence waxes. Tonight is Passage-Time, but do such traditions no longer hold preeminent sway? But let us have a test! Lay open that material body! For all your faults, humans have always been good at discovery." To Xiaobao all this was terrifying gibberish.
Nearly covered by a pile of burly captors, the Blue Mask almost threw off two of them when it nonchalantly shrugged with incredible force. Lasu nearly dropped his knife as he felt the captive press its own throat against the blade. Without any conscious thought he whipped the knife away before it bit into the masked man's flesh, propelled by the instinctive impulse against murder. The Blue Mask then stood up, easily shaking off the men each half again his weight.
The Green Mask sighed, "A dull choice. We shall have to provide our own amusement."
The Masks dashed forward. The Fire Captain raised up a wall of earth but the leading Mask simply jumped over it, soaring up before crashing down like a swooping eagle. But before he reached the ground something flew out of the dark and smashed into his side, sending him rocketing sidewise.
The ground rippled beside Xiaobao and magically reached up to catch Ma'er who fell down from the dark of heaven. He landed smoothly but stumbled slightly on the upset earth. He turned to the Fire Captain.
"They can't dodge while in the air."
The other Masks held off their attack, seemingly cautioned by their fellow's harsh treatment. However, there were many more now as the several who had been chasing Ma'er now came to join the central event. Against them stood two earthbenders and a disorganized rabble of longshoremen and fire brigade members. From outside the compound the clanging of the fire bells now mixed with the sounds of an approaching crowd, drawn by the prospect of an exiting drama and nor knowing what they were walking into. Xiaobao and his friends were caught between the mob and the monsters. Then the fighting roared back into action.
...