I Found Virtue

[This is my first post in a long time. It is based in the Avatar the Last Airbender universe. Though I'd like to know your opinion even if you are not familiar with Lin Beifong or the bending arts (using martial arts to manipulate the natural elements and sub-elements). The other main character is one of my own making. Check me out on twitter: @Chief_Lin @Virtue_Breaker

I Found Virtue

         A multitude of voices echo throughout the high, domed metal structure. Tiresome bookies, seductive courtesans, greedy gamblers, wretched slaves, lecherous nobles; these are just a few of the many voices that fill this place. It is a place of debauchery and entertainment where dirty money and even dirtier deeds may be exchanged, but most of all it is a place of death. No amount of cheap whore’s sweet perfume could mask the rancid smell of decaying humanity.

         A large circular sand pit looms in the middle of the underground structure. The spotlights over head bathe the fenced area in a harsh, golden light. Barred tunnels, large and small, line the edge of the sunken circle and lead to an elaborate network of passageways that burrow deep into the bowels of the earth. Bloodthirsty beasts and fighters rise from these black pits and make their way out onto the yellow topaz stage and perform for the crowd; to lose their life or take another’s. Though there were many avenues of amusement in this crowded place, the thing at its center was also its bloody heart.

*          *          *

         A tall woman watches as blood, teeth, and chunks of animal flesh scatter the sand of the brightly lit arena. The slit of her long black dress parts around her sultry leg as she props a hand on her hip and moves her green gaze along the half-starved and fully-crazed tigerdillos that seek to tear each other apart.

         Her annoyed sigh is barely audible over the snapping jaws as a man’s finger trails across the bare skin of her back.

         His breath is hot on the back of her neck. “Hey beautiful, I’ve never seen you here before.” The fat Earth noble’s hand moves presumptuously to rest at the small of her back. “I assure you; I would remember an ass like that.”

         The dagger that is strapped to the inside of her thigh presses with a comfortingly deadly weight into her skin. “If you value that hand, I would remove it and walk away.”

         The man scoffs. His hand tightenes to pick the tightly fitted fabric away from her skin and yank her back against him.

         Her green eyes narrow as the establishment’s other patrons pass by and pretend not to see. Faster than thought, she reaches her hand around, grabs his, turns, and jams his fingers into an inescapable submission hold.

         His eyes hang open wide with pain and baffled amazement. She simply raises a brow and jams her thumb down. A cry of confused pain snaps from the lecherous noble’s mouth as he holds his hand to his chest. “Y…you broke my hand!”

         She shrugs.

         “I’ll have your head for this you bitch!” The tall woman simply smirks and turns back to the bloody scene in the arena.

*          *          *

         A small girl paces back and forth. Thick steel bars blur together and tufts of sand rise up in unnatural waves under her poorly shod feet as she continues her fevered movement at the end of the tunnel. Her body is crisscrossed in a quilt of thick scars from innumerable whippings and the biting edge of many swords. They are permanent reminders of every terrible wrong and biting anguish. The clipped edge of her left ear and the branded number “16” on the underside of her wrist denotes her status as a slave.

         As the shredded carcasses of the tigerdillos are dragged out of the arena by malnourished slaves trails of red blood are left in the sand to congeal into a crusty black gloop. Expectant mutters replaced the jeering calls of the crowd.

         The girl halts a hairsbreadth away from the bars. Her sharp green eyes peer across the sandy arena to examine her opponent. He is a tall boy about of about 16 years old or two years her senior. His mousey brown hair matches his eyes.

The girl grips her rusty short sword in her right hand and peels her full red lips back over her teeth into a snarl as the bars began to rise.

*          *          *

         “Chief.” A well-dressed man startled the elegant woman from her examination of the vicious girl with a hushed whisper.

         “What Officer Mino?”

         “Ba Sing Sei’s earthbenders have reached the outer layer of the dome. They are ready when we are.”

         The woman disguises a nod with a derisive shake of her hand and begins to walk away. “Alert the other metalbenders. We will commence on my signal.” She fades away into the crowd.

*          *          *

         The bars thunk open. Loose sand squelches beneath the girl’s feet as she walks into the bright light of the arena. The crowd’s murmuring grows louder.

Blade down, she presses the hilt of her sword on the hard leather of the armor over her heart. Shouts of  “Fighter…Fighter…Fighter…” echo through the metal dome.

         The boy looks confused and terrified when she reverses her grip and raises the blade high above her head and the crowd roars in approval.

*          *          *

         The woman, Chief Lin Beifong of Republic City, looks in puzzlement at the scene taking place in the arena. The black haired girl’s display of confidence shook the Chief to the core. Shouldn’t she be the one looking nervous and lost? Not the apparently advantaged boy.

         She had heard excited murmurs among the crowd about this girl they simply called Fighter. The Chief now understood why. The girl’s every movement was defined in hard lines of restrained violence. The angular features of her face might have been, in another life, soft and comforting, but they had been molded by years of hardship and abuse into stunning marks of her harsh experience. In her green eyes was a beautiful danger.

         With a morbid sense of reluctance, the Chief rips her attention from the center of the arena and her eyes scan the crowd. She spots her partner, Mino, looking ridged in his designated spot at the back of the crowd. As the Chief identifies her other two pairs of metalbenders spaced evenly around the dome she makes her way toward Mino.

         The clang of steel jars her hearing as she takes her position a few feet away from Mino.

*          *          *

         Fighter begins to slowly turn in place as she holds her short sword high in the air and the crowd cheers.

         Her ear twitches. She hears the faint crunching of sand under the boy’s feet as he steps forward to strike down across the open target of her back just as she suspected. She brings her sword down in a vicious arc as she accelerates her turn with unexpected speed. Her sword clangs onto his and provides extra momentum behind his slash. He is thrown off balance and she helps him to the ground with a swift kick to the head.

         His face smashes into the ground and sand wedges between his eye lids and gathers in his nostrils, choking him. He lifts his head to cough and suck in a breath but his face in shoved once more into the suffocating sand as Fighter lands on top of his back and slams her knee into the base of his neck.

         The girl feels a merciless disgust as the larger slave boy sobs beneath her. She lays the cold steel edge on top of the pulsing carotid artery in his neck.

*          *          *

         “Now!” Chief Beifong’s dress slit pulls back, revealing her leg as she stomps the dirty concrete in her strappy metal stilettos and throws flat palms up high over her head. The other five metalbenders work in practiced unison with her. They move their palms down toward the metal wall in front of them and the entire place bucks. The Chief’s teeth are bared in a concentrated grimace and sweat beads on her forehead as she, Mino and the other metalbenders yank their hands back into fists at their sides.

         The metal screeches and thuds to the ground as three jagged half circles five paces wide each are ripped into the wall of the dome.

         Screams of outrage and fear replace the cheers, jeers, and catcalls that once filled the air as Ba Sing Sei’s earthbenders flood the wretched place.

         “Mino! We’re done here. Round up the others and get out. I’ll be just a moment.” Mino salutes his Chief’s orders and wades into the roiling crowd.

*          *          *

         The sword draws a bead of blood just before Fighter is tossed off of the boy’s back by the violent quaking of the earth. She bounces along the ground but her heels and the fingers of her left hand draw grooves in the sand as she anchors them there and crouches.

         Once the earth ceases it violent bucking she stand and gazes around; the crowd is in complete disarray and benders in the green and gold uniforms of Ba Sing Sei’s law enforcement rush through yawning holes in the metal walls.

         Fighter is vaguely aware of the tall boy as he rises to his feet, unsure.

         “Are you coming or what?” Fighter’s voice is full of reluctant pity.

         “C…coming?”

         “Now is our chance to escape. Leave this life forever.” She spit on the ground at his feet in contempt. “Don’t be a coward. Let’s go.”

         Her legs pump furiously as she sprints toward the tall fence and he follows and a slightly slower gangly pace. She leaps up as they reach the fence, but her fingers scrabble uselessly at the tightly linked metal and she thumps back to the ground.

         A whistle grabs Fighter’s attention and her head whips up to meet the hard gaze of Chief Lin Beifong. The woman hold’s a bloody dagger in one hand and the hem of her obviously expensive dress is ripped to shreds.

Vicious snarls and growls draw the two young slaves’ attention back to the arena. The boy whimpers and presses his back against the fence as the, presumably, freed arena beasts prowl toward them. Fighter meets their roars with an equally threatening growl and holds her sword at the ready.

         The Chief grips her dagger in a reverse grip fist and throws several one-two punches through the fence opening up a hole large enough for two young people to fit through.

         “Come on now! Hurry!” She holds her hand out to them and Fighter grasps her hand. The Chief pulls the surprisingly slight girl up and through the fence and reaches her hand back down toward the boy.

         He jumps up and reaches for her hand but he is yanked out of the woman’s grasp by the claws of a ravenous tigerdillo. His agonized screams end an instant later as the animal’s jaws clamp over his throat.

         The Chief turns away from the brown eyed boy’s slow slaughter and looks at the thin warrior girl. “What are you waiting for…let’s go!”

         Fighter nods, and follows the athletic woman through the mass of stampeding nobles and screaming whores.

*          *          *

         Fighter shields her eyes as she climbs out of the dark depths of her nightmares and into the bright light of mid-day.

         The Chief climbs out of the jagged hole in the cobble stone courtyard after her and sighs deeply. The older woman crosses her arms over the blood and dirt streaked fabric of her low cut dress and stares at the strange girl for a long moment.

         “What is your name girl?”

         Fighter stares back defiantly and the leather wrapped hilt of her short sword creaks under her tightening grip.

         The woman sighs. “How about a trade? Food for a name…deal?”

         Fighter narrows her eyes at the hard woman and slowly nods her head.

         The intimidating woman in a ruined, low cut gown and the scarred girl in the battered leather chest plate drew many curious glances as they walked through the courtyard and turned onto a bustling market street.

         Chief Beifong studied the girl for a moment then nodded. “Two sweet buns please.” The ruddy earth kingdom merchant exchanged two rolls dripping with honey for the Chief’s copper coin and went about serving the next customer.

         The girl took the treats gingerly in her hands, sniffed them, and then shoved them into her mouth as if they would disappear at any moment. She chewed and swallowed. “They call me Fighter, because I’ve never had a name. Fighter is not who I am. It is what I am.”

         The woman nodded again. “The title is certainly fitting. Our name defines us.” She thinks for a moment before kneeling in front of the thin young woman. “What would you like to be called?”

         She crosses her arms over her chest and looks Chief Lin Beifong boldly in the eye. “If our names define us, then I want to be called something good…something that the world needs more of.” Her eyes narrow and a deadly light glints in the deep green pools. “I want to be called Virtue.”