12 Captain Zar'un

This endeavor was proving to be more frustrating than I had ever anticipated.

He's just one man, yet he's being a pain in the ass more than anybody alive ever has before.

How it was that the report on Gyani wasn't closed yet was a mystery to me, yet something was telling me that I was missing something.

What the hell was he here to do? He served in the Taisho Defense Garrison for 7 years, nothing to incriminate him, nothing in the slightest pointing towards him being a traitor, the only reason we'd caught him in the first place being something so simple as him trying to sneak out into the slums. Nothing unusual, we'd all thought after it had been brought to my attention. The interior had its share of means for which a man could find satisfaction, but none were prone to argue that the slums had its share of diamonds in the rough. Where they were, I had no clue, but if rumor was to be believed, they did exist.

We would have assumed Gyani's behavior to be just that, but the biweekly visits, always on the same day, always at the same time, it was far too punctual to just be a bout of lust. Perhaps a mistress, a bastard son, something such as that, at which point, it had the potential to be something worth investigating. And we had. We didn't expect him to be a traitor.

Now, his accomplice was still somewhere in the streets, Gyani was dead, and I still was no closer to finding out just what was going on save that, for some unholy reason, he was meeting with the Rats.

And now I'm paying off a gang to do the heavy lifting for me and root them out. I shook my head. It was distasteful enough to even think about it.

As though thinking of the other matter is any better.

Things were at a standstill outside of the interior walls. I had no way of knowing how things progressed and, frankly, I couldn't allow that to be my concern at the moment. I was having a hard enough time wondering what Gyani had been doing within my walls to ruminate over what he'd been doing outside of them.

Enough to worry about in here.

And I'm achieving nothing just waiting here.

Ever since he'd been caught, his room had been torn apart more times over than I could count. Even now, on my orders, they did so again, going further than they had any time before. Furniture torn apart piece by piece, scraped away, run over with no shortage of chemicals our alchemists could conjure, precisely the same done with the entirety of his room, every floor board stripped, wall paneling removed, stone blocks excavated and ground to dust, all revealing nothing.

It was not a short walk there from my office, but I afforded myself the time to make the same journey I had made many times before, wondering if things would appear any different now.

They didn't.

The lengths I had gone to, ordering the entire floor's residents relocated elsewhere for the meanwhile, perhaps it was too much. All I was capable of knowing was that I was missing something, and it was eating away at my mind.

What the hell am I missing?

Why the hell was he here?

And what the hell was he doing?

There had to be something else. He wasn't acting alone. We knew that much. There were contacts in the street, but who? That was an answer I wouldn't be getting until the lowly street urchins I'd paid off could get their shit together. I was an idiot to strike a bargain with them in the first place. The odds were they'd just taken the portion of the payment and considered their work done. We weren't going to send in men after them. They knew that. It'd been 4, no, 5 years since the riots and, needless to say, the understanding was made clear that they had their Taisho, and we had ours.

The perfect place for the Earth Kingdom to sink its claws.

Was that what it was? I wondered. Them using radical elements to infiltrate the city? I was unable to put it past them. Even in the colonies, as far away as one could get on this continent from Ba Sing Se, whispers of the Dai Li spread, of what they were capable of, and the lengths they'd go to in order to ensure their safety.

Ba Sing Se's safety, I reminded myself. They had no reason to roam out this far. That wasn't their doing. A local lord, however, intent on reclaiming his ancestors' 'lost lands', that was another possibility, and a far more likely one, vengeful cultists eager for any chance they could get to strike back, regardless of how unholy the alliance they need forge may be.

Perhaps Gyani was taking orders. If so, it made little sense that such orders were coming from the Rats. Unless their influence spreads more than we know. Then again, it was also possible Gyani had been lying. We'd pumped him full of every truth-saying chemical we had in our stores. Then the final option that his orders came from somebody other than the Rats he associated with.

Assuming he didn't act alone. Is that what it was? I wondered. A lone monk carrying out his own scheme. Scheme? What scheme? He'd done nothing. He hadn't sabotaged us, hadn't assassinated any key figures within the inner city, hadn't incited a rebellion, nothing. I wasn't about to believe that the food riots were his doing. I doubted one man would be able to stop the flow of food into the city for months on end without raising a modicum of suspicion, no. That hadn't been him. Then what had? What was he doing here?

Already, back at my office, as I looked over document after map after report after testimony, I knew it wouldn't leave the back of my head. Not for a while at least. He's dead, but damnit if he's going to prove to be a bigger thorn in my side now than ever when he was alive.

I'd only met him once. Not to any official degree, of course, but I'd known his name. Then again, in a city such as Taisho with a garrison of less than half a thousand, it wasn't difficult to remember names, even those as common as 'Lee.'

I forced myself to scoff at the thought of it. Lee. Of all the names to choose from. It was as though he'd asked somebody what our most common name was before settling on it for himself. I could already tell I would be wary of an unfortunate soul by the name of 'Lee' for at least a few more years to come.

I'll get over it, I told myself.

I have to. There's no point worrying about it now.

I knew that I lacked all the pieces of this puzzle, but what more was there to do? What can I do?

The monk who went by Gyani was dead and gone. I'd watched his cremation himself just to ensure there were no loose ends. Whatever secrets he had known had died with him. Whatever contacts he had in the slums, they were unreachable to us. Whatever plans he'd had in the making, they were done now, at least his role in them. I could only chase after phantoms for so long.

I gathered the loose papers on my desk, gathering them together before shifting through them one at a time, organizing them as best as I could, ensuring everything was in its proper place: transcripts, reports, testimonies, everything. It had its own file in my desk. Of course it did, never, however, gathering dust in the last two weeks given my tireless nature in scrolling through them numerous times a day as though, by some miracle, I'd find the 'missing link'. I scoffed. Life so very rarely works like it does in the Ember Island plays. I'd only been once, but apparently its influence on my expectations had been severe.

I tapped the edges of the papers along the surface of my desk, assuring they were all placed together as neatly as they could before tucking them within the folder simply marked 'Lee Shuni,' the investigation having been opened before his true name had been known. And for simplicity's sake, so it would remain.

I wasn't keen on closing the file, to be sure, not while matters remained open, but nor was I about to allow it to seep into every dark corner of my mind. I was the Captain of this city's garrison and, as such, its military governor. I didn't have the luxury of dedicating my entire being to a single individual who now was nothing more than ash in an urn in a dank passageway beneath the city.

I did, however, happen to have a name in mind belonging to an individual in great need of redeeming himself. Zarrow would be an appropriate fit to take over for the moment. I had little expectation of him reaching some breakthrough, but at the very least, I felt I could rely on him to keep eyes active on this, and try regardless. I did not suspect that his sympathy for Lee Shuni would extend so far as treason in shrouding the man's activities after he had already been removed from this world. His loyalty was to his nation, not a single man, a dead one at that. On normal occasion, after such a failure, one wouldn't put a man like this in charge of a matter like this, but I was short on other options. He had been Gyani's superior and if there was a unit in this garrison where I would find those who'd known the man once called Lee Shuni best, it was his.

I'm taking a chance, I realized, but it was my best and only option.

He'll come through.

"Zhorou!" I called out, already able to hear the pitter patter of his eager-to-serve feet on the other side of the door as he rushed to attention.

As my steward neared ever closer, I began the draft of the orders that would be given to Zarrow.

"You called me, Captain Za'run?" he asked, promptly bowing and proceeding to stand at attention.

"Yes, I answered. "Summon Lieutenant Zarrow."

"Yes, sir," he answered, bowing once more before quickly dashing away to do as I bid. I still wished to talk to him in person, but there were a number of ground thing that needed going over that I wished not to forget–matters I would wish for him to pay special interest to, namely: a re-evaluation and secondary questioning of those with ties to Gyani, a final conclusive comb-over of his quarters, and surveillance on the gangs. I didn't specify what it was I was looking for. Zarrow would know better than I would what was possible and what wasn't in terms of us exerting our influence across the slums. I wasn't about to make the foolish mistake of demanding the impossible.

And if nothing comes of this? I wondered.

Then just another open inquiry among hundreds more in the Fire Nation. It was of no special note, it wasn't the end of the world, an omen of our Nation's fall. But still, it was something I would sleep better at night having closed.

For now, however, I couldn't let it get it to. A personal vendetta was the last thing I needed.

For now, I thought, bringing out a new folder, slamming it down on my desk, one filled to the brim with what was indisputably far more information. I have a city to run.