...
Xiaobao and Xinfei leaned back against the cold grey brick of a shuttered fabric shop across the street from the Silver Snake Playhouse. Over by the theater's glittering entrance there were several uniformed city guards leaning in much the same position as they provided their own security for the distinguished patrons inside. Xiaobao saw those men give a few nervous glances at him and down the darker sections of the street in each direction. The guards thumbed their sword hilts. There were a lot of other people out in Kuang Harbor tonight and many of them were wearing black headbands. The guards didn't like that.
Xiaobao, however, was proud of the town. Whatever this neighborhood watch thing had grown into, he knew that it was rooted in a core of anger, frustration, and fear. It would have been all too easy for that kind of organization to turn against those who'd been calling them traitors for making their living off foreign trade. So far that hadn't happened. There had been a few close calls but as much as he hated to admit it, those college boys had given some good suggestions. Assigning patrol routes and regularly mixing up postings kept people busy and moving. When they were doing something they didn't feel as helpless in fear of fire, spirits, and the furious government.
Suddenly a sound in the dark caught his ear but even so it took Xiaobao a moment to decide what it was that made him glance up from the pools of lamplight on the paving bricks. On a night when even he was expecting to see the suggestion of spirits flitting in the shadows a strange noise could really be anything. But this sound was the slap of human sandals against the ground in the alley across the street.
Two men in theater staff uniforms came running out of the shadows into the light spilling forth from the blindingly bright playhouse facade. Xiaobao reached out to bump his brother's arm for his attention.
"Look at that. Ayika and them must be making their move inside."
Xinfei looked over at the two runners, and he was soon joined by Ma'er and Mua who materialized out of their own dark corner behind him. The workers must have fled as soon as the first accusation started flying inside. That was probably sensible of them but Xinfei still frowned. "Wait, why would Public Safety risk anyone like that getting out to spread rumors?"
Mua grunted dismissively. "Maybe you're overestimatin' those greenies-"
"No," Ma'er interrupted. Underneath his granite-like expression the earthbender was worried. "The boy's right. Yang should have had every exit watched and barred before there was even a hint of crisis. With the warning letter I sent him he would have taken no chances in letting witnesses escape. Something is wrong."
The guards in front of the theater had also heard the running and turned around. The workers, however, were not in the mood to deal with any officers of the law. They were in a panic and they were spreading the news.
"The Fire Nation's burning down the city! The masked spirit warriors are Islanders! They've murdered tons of people!" They yelled out to the town in general and the guards in particular before continuing to bolt on down the street.
Ma'er let out a short powerful curse before saying, "And that is why you lock down the exits. Yang isn't here."
Xiaobao felt the panic rising up in his chest. "What do you mean? Your Public Safety aren't here? How? Damn it, damn it!" This could all go up in flames if that story spread. People would attack the Exclusion and who knew what their firebenders would do in exchange. Well, that's why Ayika had trusted him to have sensible people out here as a second line of defense. He ran forward into the middle of the street and waved his arms as he yelled out down the direction the theater workers were running. A group of black bands were posted up the lane. "Hey! Stop those crazy guys until we know what's going on!"
Xinfei ran up to Xiaobao's side with a pained expression on his face. "If Tailang's not already in cuffs it's going to be a bloodbath in there, and the girls are in the middle of all that! Tailang and his goons are going to start blasting their way out with firebending even if they don't use the masks. They've got no one to stop them! He'll cut through everyone!"
Their own bender insurance policies were paying disturbingly little attention. Ma'er was even facing the wrong direction, looking back towards the city wall looming darkly in the distance. High up in the night there was a light flashing from the battlements above the gateway fortress. Xinfei hissed him, desperate for information. "What's that saying? What's going on?!"
The earthbender shook his head. "It's coded but such an obvious communication method is only used in moments of crisis. Something kept Yang from responding to my message. Someone must be making a move in the city."
"Someone's makin' a move here too," Mua broke in, walking slowly in the direction of the theater front. She was holding her head and seemed to wobble slightly. One of the guards had opened the front door to investigate and now they could hear the sounds of screams and running feet spilling out from within. "I just felt it. The Masks are here in force!" She wavered. "Grah! They're all going to cross over. There are too many holes in this damn city!"
Another group of people, again mostly theater workers but with a few who looked like guests, came running out of the building. Now some of the the city guards and the approaching volunteer black bands joined in the shouting on the street as confusion spread. The sounds of panic were rippling out into the distance of neighboring roads.
This stampeding fear could consume the town. Everyone who feared the Islanders would have their worse fantasies confirmed. Xiaobao roared out at the no one in particular or the entire night-enveloped country in general. "Hold on! We've got to hold on to the peace!" If the people of the town wanted to invest a no-one like him with authority then maybe, just maybe, some might listen to him now when everything was falling apart. Listen to him say what, he didn't know. The plan inside had failed.
Xinfei ran forward, bolting toward the theater doors.
Xiaobao shouted after him, "Xinfei!"
His brother only ran faster. "The girls are in there! Have to save them!"
Mama Mua suddenly sprinted along beside the boy, throwing herself into the heart of the turmoil of people hurrying out of the building. Then Ma'er was following those two. As he passed he called out to Xiaobao. "Do what you can! Hold out for the government response!"
Then Xiabao was left standing in the street. He black band friends were running towards him but for that brief moment he was alone with the spectral shadows made by the glass housed lanterns whose flames were dancing a strange dance. Then the screams started.
...
Chao Erliao stood on the edge of the stage with the spirit mask in his hand, backlit by hooded lanterns meant to illuminate the actors He was alive. Ayika saw the mask, recognized its purple marks, and at once knew the terrible mistake she'd made. She remembered being pursued by a man possessed by purple wings. A man who'd burst forth from Erliao's quarters after they heard a scream. There had been no mysterious attacker laying in wait, Erliao himself had put on the mask in order to fight Mua. Put on the mask and then been completely possessed by the wild spirit which forgot everything but hate.
"Surprised?" Erliao glared up at Tailang in the upper balcony before him. "Your nation's attempt on my life was a failure!"
Tailang goggled down at the seeming resurrected minister, for brief moment forgetting the slate of accusations that had just been levied against him. "Erliao? Where have you been? I knew those idiotic students weren't competent enough to have actually killed you."
"I was saved!" Here Erliao raised up the mask to present it triumphantly to the crowded theater. He seemed furiously insulted by Tailang's confused reaction. "The spirit gods of our great city have preserved me from your harlot assassin!"
The astonished crowd of theatergoers murmured. Some few had fled at the first hint of disruption but those who remained were entranced by the conflict that was unfolding before them. Erliao was dirty, disheveled, and dressed in ill-fitting clothes. The arm that held the mask trembled and twitched. It looked like he hadn't slept in days. It was evident something else had been sustaining him.
Tailang leaned back slightly as he looked down on Erliao in flat amazement. He said, "Ah, so you have completely lost it. Well, I guess that explains what you've been doing these last few days. And your old witch sweetheart tried to kill you? Well, I'd just thought she would be an embarrassment but having met you I cannot say I blame her." Now he suddenly remember the personal political crisis that had just erupted moments prior to Erliao's emergence. He turned back to the astonished Zhangyi and Jiang his balcony and resumed his powerful orator voice, now at once sympathetic and patronizing. "You see boys, someone has used you as fools! All your accusations against me are completely baseless; the invention of petty, jealous men! I'm not behind any conspiracy!"
But Erliao would not consent to be ignored. He screamed back, his voice shaking with fury. "No, you are not the leader of the Masks! Because I reclaimed them from you!"
Ayika could feel a void opening up underneath her heart. They'd gotten it wrong. She'd gotten it all wrong. At her side she could feel Mizumi trembling with tension. Even Tailang was momentarily silenced by surprise and confusion at the outburst.
Erliao stood on the stage, growling out each word thick with anger and hate. "You foreign scum. You poisoned this city, and had the arrogance to create your own enemy. The so-called nationalists were harmless student demonstrations and mild meaningless vandalisms, all at your order and for your gain. They let you play the victim so well. So perfectly in control. You must have felt so very clever!"
He took a breath. His hands were trembling but he continued, half muttering to himself and half preaching to the crowd. Tailang was right, Erliao seemed unhinged though Ayika feared that only made him more dangerous. "But I've won. Justice has won and I was happy to pay the price! Doing away with your undercover servant was easier than I'd ever imagined. Then, with your messenger gone, the organization was mine. One little death to save the city and the gods themselves smiled on me. When I touched the society's disguises I recognized they were filled with our nation's own holy power. It was a message to me. Everything I'd studied in my life had led me here. I wasn't punished by the spirits, I was rewarded! These masks! Every day they grow stronger as they are wielded by the just and righteous servants of our city! With them I had soldiers! I had warriors to strike back against the invaders and the corrupt! You have underestimated the gods of our great culture!" Ayika's heart sunk still further with disbelief. Erliao didn't know where the masks came from. The leader of the Masks didn't understand the source of his power.
Then she heard Lili's high pitched stifled scream from the opposite balcony. She looked down to see more audience members pulling out masks from hiding places within their clothes. There were a lot of them; far too many. Ayika gripped the wooden railing in front of her, as to her eyes the air seemed to ripple around that many masks held so close together. Ayika's plan had been doomed from the start. They'd gotten it wrong, disastrously wrong. But at least Ma'er had arranged for Public Safety agents to be here. Surely they would burst forth at any moment.
Gods and Kings, she was actually praying for Public Safety.
"You murdered Hiro?!" Tailang was now raging back, completely oblivious to the danger of the masks below him. "Guards! Seize that man! He has just admitted to a capital crime in front of two hundred witnesses!" As the Representative thrust his pointing finger out, Erliao began to slowly raise the mask up nearer to his face. Tailang yelled out triumphantly, "It's a little late to disguise yourself, you evil little-"
"No!"
The cry tore itself out of Ayika's throat and she felt her chest ache from the effort.
"Erliao, don't!"
Heads snapped up to look towards her, most of them staring at Mizumi first, expecting the Islander to have spoken again. Ayika panted as she saw Erliao slowly recognize her. Her own thoughts at once seemed glacial and racing beyond control. If Erliao had truly been behind the Masks, behind them murdering Professor Lizhen and old Chouyu then she hated him. But she'd seen the thing that had chased Mizumi and her on the night of the Festival. It hadn't been a man, but an inhuman spirit that wore him like a puppet. That was something worse than death, and then everyone in this theater would be at risk. She had to try and stop it, even if it meant saving a murderer.
"You don't understand! Those masks aren't powered by your cause or your patriotism! Your men stole the funeral mask of Ambassador Naruhama. Now you guys are empowered by a half-deified Fire Nation ghost! It's bringing down the barrier to the spirit world and bringing in wild spirits! Last time you wore that mask we had to..." To explain Mua and Blind Dog Lord would take too long. Seconds were precious here. "You won't get the spirit mask off the same way again! Everything's worse. If you put that mask on now you could be consumed forever!"
Erliao narrowed his eyes as he finally recognized the other foreign girl who had saved him from Mua's murderous intent. "Ah, Chen's last sad devotee, with his last little student. I suppose it's fitting you're here at the end. But you too are wrong. We've never stolen anything." Consideration and a touch of fear battled behind his face. He looked down at the mask in his hands. The theater paused in a breathless confused hush.
Ayika breathed out, "Please. Don't."
Erliao did not look back.
"So be it. It is a sacrifice I gladly make to save my culture."
Then he pressed the wooden mask to his face and a sound beyond hearing screeched through the fabric of the world. Ayika felt a pressure behind her eyes as colored auras flared into life around Erliao and many others down on the lower floor. The chorus of screams told her that everyone else in the audience could see it too.
Phantasmal purple wings boiled into existence, flaring out from Erliao's arched back. Then his masked face snapped up, focusing on Tailang with an animalistic intensity and burning eyes. He crouched and sprang, rocketing through the air like a dart from a bow. Then he came crashing down; smashed through the wooden railing of the upper box and lashed out everyone there. A sudden blast of fire bloomed into existence as some firebender in the Exclusion party fought back. Erliao wavered before the force but the licking flames didn't sear his skin, shielded as it was in the expanding body of the spirit that was using his as a doorway into the material world.
Mizumi sprang forward from her seat. In half a moment, her foot was on the railing as she prepared to climb around the outside of the balconies in a heartrendingly heroic attempt to join the fight. Panicked, Ayika reached out to clutch her but Mister Miohuito was faster. He seized his daughter's arm with enough force to cause her to gasp in pain as he tugged her back.
Mizumi yelled out, "No, father! We have to-!"
Mister Miohuito didn't say a single word but bodily pulled Mizumi with him as he rushed for the exit from the box driven by fear-driven strength. Ayika ran after him, even as some poor victim from below was tossed through the air to slam heavily into the wall beside the box before falling back down to smash onto wooden chairs. Amid the first floor tables and in the Fire Nation box above, the other Masks had already fallen to complete possession. The spirits that inhabited them had been called to this world by the desire to fight and now they were fighting everyone and everything regardless of politics. These spirits were not the orderly gods of the city, but the wild exiled forces who now had a gateway for their inhuman power. They were playing, and humans were dying. Ayika ran and could only hope that Lili and the students could get away too.
...
Lili staggered out into the street as a wide chunk of the front of the playhouse exploded into splinters behind her. The silver head of an ornamental snake statue went flying over her shoulder. Time seemed disjointed. She'd run through the shuddering halls inside and she'd briefly seen Ma'er and Mua enter the fray, joining their elemental magic with the bender members of the audience who'd been attempting to fight the Masks. A moment later, as she half ran, half fell down the lobby staircase she'd seen some of those same well dressed benders lying as dark crumpled piles amid holes through shattered walls. Now she was outside but the screaming and roar of supernatural strength was no less deafening.
She felt a tug on her arm, hard enough to hurt her shoulder, and remembered that Xinfei's hand was gripping her own. He'd found her stumbling in the lobby and together they had managed to force their way out the front doors that were clogged with screaming, fleeing patrons. She might have been screaming herself. Somewhere along the line Lili had lost track of Mengre. She wondered if he'd gotten out. She'd known him in her father's house all her life.
Xinfei was saying something to her:
"Come on! Maolin's out here! We'll get you away. Where's Ayika?!"
Lili looked back at the playhouse that already had smoke spilling out the holes that earthbenders or Masks had knocked into its walls. Some Islander firebenders tried to fight, but once the fire they summoned left their control and touched any material fuel it didn't need their magic to sustain it. The building was going to be an inferno very soon.
Suddenly a thick arm wrapped around Lili's waist and half-lifted her as she was hauled back across the street. Xinfei's face lit up with a small measure of relief as he recognized Xiaobao.
"Maolin! Where's-!"
"Ayika and Mizumi got out! They're over there!" Xiaobao pointed over down the street. Lili managed to focus her eyes and saw Mizumi struggling against the grip of her father, resisting his attempts to make her flee. Then the stream of panicked people shifted and Lili saw Ayika standing firm in the middle of the brick-paved street, somehow forcing the crowd to part around her by pure will. Her face turned back and forth in constant searching for something in the crowd. Then she saw Lili and spun back to call out something at Mizumi.
A man wearing a black headband ran up to Xiaobao. He was panting and heaving as he said, "They said the benders are all dead! You've got to get out of here!"
"No!" Xiaobao was not the shy, polite young man Lili had first seen on the streets outside her home. He was firm and somehow looked even taller and stronger than he already was. The black cloth band stretched across his forehead. "They're...There are still people in there! We've got to try and help them!"
Other people had different priorities. Some of the civilian earthbenders who'd escaped were now using their magic to raise up crude brick barriers in front of the first floor doors and windows, as if that could seal the masked monsters inside. The ladies among them struggled against the formal playgoing clothes that restrained their magical motions. A glance back through the remaining doors to the destroyed theater lobby revealed that the space was now filled with thick white smoke. Then that false smoke swirled together into a compacting stream of water drawn from mist, revealing Mua and Ma'er rushing out of the vanishing fog, vaulting over a rising earthen barrier. They were followed by Zhanyi and Jiang who did not manage to clear it with the same ease and tumbled across the rough ground beyond. Jiang yelled out in pain as he hit the paving stones.
Mua coughed as her magic guided the floating water back into her large stoppered pouch before she bent over, propping her hands against her thighs for support. Ma'er didn't even take a moment to rest. He yelled out at the other earthbenders and their futile walls, "Forget that! Fires have spread! The building is lost! We have to bring it down!"
With that, he sank down into a wide low stance and thrust out his fists, causing the stone at the corner of the playhouse to crack and shudder. The other earthbenders were not government trained, just theater fans with the appropriate family lineage for the gift to manifest, but in the chaos like this anyone who sounded like they knew what to do was like a raft in a flood. The message spread out and the earth magic users ran to undermine more points of the structure.
Xiaobao ran up to Ma'er, shouting, "You can't! There are probably still people in there!"
Off to the side, Zhangyi unsteadily climbed to his feet. He sounded hollow. "If there are, none of them are getting out. Those...things are playing with the fallen like cats with injured mice. Erliao... what was Erliao, he beat down two firebenders and then focused on Tailang. I saw it break the Trade Representative's arms one by one, and then it snapped his neck. I think it was curious."
There were soot marks across Zhanyi's torn jacket and a bloody scrape on his forehead. Jiang looked worse for the wear, favoring his left leg, but he had been in Tailang's balcony box when the Masks attacked so the fact that he was alive at all was remarkable.
Lili felt dazed. She stood dumbly in the middle of the street, distantly wondering how everything had gone so wrong. Then she was suddenly moving and it took her a moment to realize that Xinfei was pulling her again.
"I've got to get you out of here," he said. "Ayika!"
"Here."
Suddenly, Ayika was at her side and the three of them were running over to Mizumi and her father. As soon as she saw them, Mizumi broke free from her father's pulling grasp and proceeded to reverse the action by pushing him in the direction he had been trying to make her go. She yelled something at him in the Islander language as they took off. Mister Miohuito yelled something back and Mizumi broke into the Kingdoms' language out of sheer frustration.
"We are not getting the carriage! Look around! Are you insane?! We run!"
They dashed off down the dark and chaotic streets as behind them there was a creaking, rumbling crash. The earthbenders had begun to bring down the playhouse. Lili suddenly noticed that Xiaobao, Zhangyi, Jiang, and the benders were missing. They must have stayed behind to organize some sort of response from the black bands. Ayika called out the plan in between pants.
"We're going to the Exclusion! The bits of the Fire Nation group passed us a few moments back! Mizumi's dad can get us past the bridge and that place has their army people!"
They rounded a corner and from down another street they suddenly heard an outburst of screams. Then there was a familiar inhuman screeching roar. The Masks had escaped the theater and were loose in the town.
A few seconds later, as they ran under stars towards the distant orange glow of the Exclusion that was just visible over the dark roofs, they heard the soft rustle of something flying overhead. Lili yelped in fright for a sudden Mask ambush, but then she wheeled around and saw three humans in the dark green robes of Public Safety bounded across rooftops towards the center of the disturbance, black against the starry sky. Each time they landed, the tiles beneath them reached up to cushion the fall and then launch them off again in less than a second. Their bounding path was heading toward the center of the disturbance. Lili prayed that those men stood a chance against what they would meet.
The fleeing party ran on and then the red towers of the Exclusion were in front of them. The illuminated forest of buildings now at once represented foreign danger and sanctuary. There were city guards in their green uniforms bunched around the entrance to the arching Bridge of Fire and beyond them on the bridge itself was another group, these dressed in red and looking considerably more committed to their assignment. Mister Miohuito began to yell out to the city guards as they approached but one hint of his accent led to that nervous detachment hurriedly opening up a path for the strange fleeing party. These men had no orders to keep foreigners from secluding themselves in their own territory.
The Fire Nation marines further on the bridge were more cautious, but after a brief shouted conversation with Miohuito they grabbed him and Mizumi to bring them in past their human barricade. However, they were less welcoming to Lili, Ayika, and Xinfei. That sparked Mizumi to start shouting out quite loudly in the Islander language and whatever she said eventually earned the three of them passage, though the soldiers' were clearly not happy about it. As she passed the marines, Lili noticed that many of these men and women weren't armed. However, that meant they were firebenders and far more deadly than any sword.
Their strangle little group of theater refugees were just cresting the half-way point of the Bridge of Fire when Mizumi began openly discuss her plan. "We must halt the magic of the Masks, somehow. If Mua cannot summon up the dog spirit again then perhaps Fire Sage Huitzlan can aid us! We do not have Mama Mua here but perhaps you can lend your power the Sage like you did before on the train, Ayika? Even if it is a temporary fixing we must try."
Ayika nodded. "Yeah. Let's-."
"Hold it!" Mister Miohuito yelled out, startling his daughter and Ayika who had both seemingly forgotten there was anyone else there. He confronted Mizumi as his voice escalated to a roar. "Mizumi, what have you gotten into?! How could you accuse...?! And who is this tribal girl, really? No, we are going straight to the house and we are going to remain there. They attacked the Trade Representative! This could be war!"
Mizumi understood his fear but she said, "Father, we-"
"No! You have put yourself in terrible danger! This must have something to do with Lizhen and that school if both Gaoli's daughter and the tribal are involved. I never should have brought you from the Nation but now-"
"Father!" Mizumi stamped her foot down so hard Lili could have sworn that the entire bridge vibrated. Mister Miohuito froze for a brief moment in the middle of his panicked paternal anger. Then Mizumi continued:
"There is a terrible spiritual threat to both our people and the people of the city. I am trying to solve it. Ayika knows more about spirits than anyone here and together with Sage Hutizlan we are going to stop this force before more people get hurt. I love you, and I am sorry, but there is no time to explain everything that has happened!" There was a moment of shocked silence. Then Lili rapidly began:
"Tailang stole some spirit powered shaman masks for a nationalist protest group he secretly created but he didn't know they had real power so Erliao figured it out and desecrated the funeral of Naruhama to strengthen the spirits and steal control of Tailang's men but now the spirits are too powerful to be controlled and they're possessing everyone and we need some sort of ritual to find Naruhama's ghost mask and shut it off."
There was a brief pause. Miuzmi blinked in surprise. "...Yes. Thank you, Lili."
Mister Miohuito let out a single word, "But-"
Mizumi interrupted. "Get back to the house. Organize protection for the staff. Ayika and I will go to the temple and hope they can help banish the spirits, at least for tonight. I have seen such a thing done before, on the night of Veils."
Mizumi and Ayika didn't wait for Mister Miohuito to protest again. They broke into a sprint and hurried off the bridge down to the Exclusion streets, striking off deep into the compact settlement towards the Fire Temple that loomed at the opposite end. After a second Lili began to move to follow them but there was a gentle tug on her hand. Xinfei quickly let go as she turned back to face him.
He said, "Look, you'll be safe here, Lili. I'm sure these people'll burn down half a ring before they let anyone in to harm their own."
Lili noticed what he was not saying. "And you're here too so it will be all of us being safe. Right?"
Xinfei threw up his arms in frustration and defeat. "I don't understand any of this spirit stuff! How could I help Ayika with any of that?" He turned back to the Kingdoms side of the bridge. "But my brother's out there. All my people are out there and if I can't fight any Masks at least I could maybe do something while you girls are talking to priests and ghosts. Something to help. Just...stay safe."
He actually managed to take three steps back up the bridge before a soft, smooth hand gripped onto his wrist like a vice. Lili glared him in the eyes, all the fear she'd been drowning in now melting away beneath her righteous fury.
"Don't you dare be a damn hero! Those are my people too! This is our city!" She took another step closer, looking ever so slightly up to glare at his amazed stare. "I don't know anything about spirits. I don't know that Mua woman or the Fire Sage. Mister Miohuito doesn't want me and I think by now Mizumi and Ayika have forgotten me entirely. But I know that I wouldn't be able to stay here huddling in safety for more than two minutes before I couldn't stand it any longer! So step up, Xinfei, we're going together or I'll go by myself!"
The dockworker and the merchant's daughter held still for a long moment. Then Xinfei burst into a disbelieving laugh. He nodded and they began to run back across the the bridge. They pushed past the startled Fire Nation marines who were not expecting anyone to come at them from behind them. Lili called out at the soldiers as she ran by. "Tell Mizumi Miohuito that Lili has gone to join the Black Bands! Find us if she can! And if a Mengre shows up, tell him I'm sorry!" Then Xinfei and her were running off to the town.
Lili spent a last spare thought hoping those men had been able to understand her language.
...