The Inquisitor collapsed to one knee, clutching his chest as he watched two blades clash. Mayumi met the outlaw head-on, her swordplay equal in discipline and relentless vigor. Sparks burst into the air as steel screamed against steel, each strike answered with unyielding precision.
"Step aside!" He Tishou screamed. "Step aside, you Dai Li watchdog!"
Mayumi did not reply. Silence, she knew, unsettled opponents far more effectively than words. But more glaringly, being a watchdog isn't exactly incorrect.
They kept dueling. Mayumi parried, riposted, then drove a thrust into her opponent's forearm. The Kyoshi Warrior was even forced to deflect a few earthen pellets, which she felt was no less powerful than the ones sent by a Dai Li. But since fighting the Inquisitor previously, she wasn't caught unprepared.
In one fluid motion, Mayumi powered through the wave of earthen pellets by slashing her way towards the opponent, then stabbed into He Tishou's thigh, crippling her advance.
The outlaw collapsed, this time truly too injured to fight. Considering He Tishou's age, time is indeed a disadvantage.
Before Mayumi could close in, the vengeful He Tishou swept her hand violently across the ground, hurling a boulder torn from the courtyard floor. Mayumi narrowly evaded thanks to her acrobatic ability. But seeing that the Dai Li's unwilling thrall is still standing, the former outlaw exhaled, a weary breath of defeat.
The disguised Kyoshi Warrior approached the gravely injured Inquisitor. "I'm surprised you're still alive."
The Dai Li coughed, blood pooling on the stone. There was cause for concern that whispers in the criminal underworld spoke of Chi-blocking techniques capable of inducing delayed death. Had He Tishou wandered its depths longer, who knew what other forbidden arts she might have mastered?
Slowly, the effects faded. The Inquisitor and the remaining Dai Li dragged themselves upright, their strength slowly returning.
As for the former outlaw, frustration and fury simmered in her gaze. The Inquisitor studied her, his expression a strange blend of irritation and curiosity. She had come perilously close to killing him. Only a twisted mind could respect someone who had nearly ended his life.
"Impressive," he said. "I am most in awe that you and that traitor so nearly ended my duty." There was not a trace of fear in his voice, a quirk even the most battle-hardened veterans of war would seldom master.
Earthbending flowed back into the Dai Li ranks, some preparing their spare metal chains that will ensnare the versatile former outlaw.
"Perhaps you presumed too much," the Inquisitor said, his tone sharpened with contempt. "It seems I will live beyond today." His lips taunted further. "The traitor is dead. What then will you do now?"
Two Dai Li agents, both bruised and bloodied themselves, moved to secure the daofei alive. They halted, momentarily confounded as He Tishou slowly crawled herself across the rain-slick stones toward the fallen Zhao Jingzhong.
A thin, dark ribbon of blood traced her passage. This illustrious former outlaw had endured the city's anarchic years, survived the lawless margins of the world, and wandered deep within the criminal undercurrents of the realm. Now she crawled unhurried, as if time itself had grown irrelevant.
In silence, she gathered the dead traitor into her arms. A steady hand then raised the saber and drew it across her own throat.
Her body collapsed forward, covering Zhao Jingzhong in death as she had in life.
The courtyard sank into an even deeper stillness, broken only by the rainfall, which imparted a perverse sense of serenity. The leader of the expedition did not bother to chastise the nearest Dai Li agents for their inaction.
Expression unchanged, the Inquisitor stepped forward and retrieved his blade. It is an unremarkable weapon, unnamed and unadorned, and was commissioned by a Dai Li who had desired a regular sword immune to manipulation by ordinary Earthbenders. Yet this simple tool had claimed two lives emblematic of the turbulent age that preceded Ba Sing Se's present calm. And neither death had been delivered by the blade's rightful owner.
"Such affection," the Inquisitor observed coldly. "Such inconvenience."
Mayumi did not miss the indifference with which an act of devotion had been dismissed. Her unease remained hidden beneath her veil and cloak. Moments earlier, the depth of such despair would have exceeded even her own comprehension, she who had fought pirates and raiders hardened by a life with nothing to lose.
"She was strong," Mayumi said at last, speaking both of He Tishou's versatility in Earthbending and combat, and of her unwavering devotion.
The sentiment was wasted on the Inquisitor. Despite his callousness, he spoke to the assembled Dai Li agents of his own lapse in judgment.
"I had forgotten that there are those willing to carry their secrets into the grave," he said, asserting that both seditionists had ensured that interrogation would yield nothing, thereby complicating efforts to uproot others who sought to disturb Ba Sing Se's order.
A cruel conclusion, one that dismissed affection entirely. To the Inquisitor, the bodies on the stones were nothing more than a traitorous Dai Li and a disgraced outlaw.
Mayumi wanted to remain quiet, but her mouth still remained too talkative.
"Isn't this… excessive?" she ventured cautiously. "They cared for one another."
Even this modest suggestion earned her a sharp, disapproving glare. As if to extinguish her naivety, the Inquisitor ordered the agents to swiftly scour the surrounding buildings of the unassuming Earthbending school.