"Inquisitor?"
Several confused agents looked on as the enforcer calmly grasped the embedded shard and pulled it free from his own flesh. Blood streamed over the rough stone as he inspected it for a brief moment before tossing it aside without so much as a wince.
Only a fool would mistake such restraint for weakness. There was no satisfaction to be found in crushing an opponent so hopelessly outmatched, especially someone who wore the likeness of their founder.
"Perhaps it would be a good idea to finally end the charade?" The Autopsist broke the silence, almost like a reminder to his younger colleague. There was little sense in prolonging the fight with a reckless youth who knew neither her place nor the gravity of her trespass. The notion that an intruder could wander into forbidden grounds and emerge unscathed would be laughable. "Making an example of her would better impress upon others the folly of setting foot here."
"A reasonable sentiment," the Inquisitor replied, finally acknowledging the Autopsist's seasoned judgment. Active veterans who had served during the Dowager's turbulent reign carried a weight of experience few among the newer generation could rival.
Without warning, two steel chains sprang out from the Inquisitor's sleeves.
Satchiko snapped open the golden war fan, knocking the first chain harmlessly aside. But the second coiled around her exposed wrist. She cursed under her breath as the metal constricted around her arm. Though an Earthbender by birth, her full talent had always been painfully stunted, and the repeated chops from metal fan failed to leave more than shallow scratches upon the metal surface.
The Inquisitor dashed forth. His earth-shod boot swept upward in a devastating kick aimed squarely at her head.
Satchiko barely managed to raise the fan in time to block. But the sheer impact simply overpowered the glinting steel, and the fan crashed violently into her face, sending her sprawling across the stone floor.
A nearby observing Dai Li frowned. Powerful as the strike had been, at least the kick had failed to send even the slightest tremor through the earth, which would have been a true lethal strike through the skull.
The Inquisitor drove the free end of his chain into the granite pavement with a sharp thrust, allowing it to act as a metal anchor that would not have worked against a capable Earthbender. But against Satchiko, it was more than enough.
Grimacing through the pain and concussion, the teen tried to wrench the ensnaring steel cuff free by sheer strength alone. But then she heard it. The unmistakable hiss of rusty steel leaving its aged scabbard.
Her hands froze. The Dai Li Inquisitor had drawn a willow-leaf saber.
Satchiko stared as he approached gradually, her own anger warring with a growing knot of fear. The black and white painted visage erased whatever humanity might have lingered beneath it, transforming him into something eerily theatrical, almost inhuman. Perhaps this is what many of his foes, which ironically could be mutual enemies, might have seen in their last moments.
"What did you expect would happen?" he asked, the question carrying genuine curiosity rather than mockery. "What power did you imagine you were meddling with?"
He circled around in an unhurried pace, as if the questioning itself is more important than the sentencing.
"My colleagues and I have buried countless conspiracies, crushed possible rebellions, and extinguished any treason that threatened this city as a rare refuge to those seeking a true respite in an era consumed by wars. Though we are not the most fondly remembered, I believe without hesitation that our current duty to preserve this small piece of harmony to be far more beneficial anything the previous Avatar can ever hope to create. Yet never have I encountered a case quite as peculiar as yours."
The Dai Li explained, almost patiently, that all she had needed to do was remain silent. The four trainees would have received their due punishment regardless, and she could have walked away from this incident unharmed. Instead, she had willingly crossed into forbidden ground, threatening to be literally separated from sunlight itself. From the perspective of the embroidered guardians surrounding her, such actions were incomprehensible. So needless and unnecessary, with no benefits to herself at all.
"Do I really need to explain why?" Satchiko shot back, incredulous that the Inquisitor could even pontificate on her motive. "Those four are in trouble because of me. It would've been wrong if I hadn't at least tried to save them."
The painted lines upon the Inquisitor's face seemed almost to tighten. Whether he found her answer amusing or contemptible was impossible to tell. The world, after all, is dictated by harshness that the young only came to understand when they are forced to endure them in horrifying ways.
"An answer I expected," the Dai Li admitted, suppressing a slight tinge of reluctance that Satchiko did not miss. "Setting aside youthful impulses and childish notions of righteousness, you must understand that my colleagues and I cannot afford such leeway. Any among our ranks who prove incapable of safeguarding the state's secrets are not beyond scrutiny, nor beyond punishment. Certain loyalty is measured by discretion. As for you, your needless interference and deliberate trespass upon forbidden ground have accomplished nothing save the acceleration of your own downfall."
Satchiko drew a breath, prepared to argue and remind him that both the Dai Li and the Kyoshi Warriors ultimately traced their origins to Avatar Kyoshi herself. But the Inquisitor spoke on that first. Aside from being reviled secret police, a Dai Li naturally would also a be competent scholar of the Earth Kingdom, possessing the important skill of literacy alongside the valuable understanding of eloquence.
"If laws and punishments are measured according to status or bloodline, can they still be called just?" The Dai Li challenged the trespasser. "Whether noble or beggar, friend or foe, a truly righteous Avatar should never distinguish between them when imparting judgment. Unlike the last three incarnates, whose wanton judgments too often bent beneath the weight of personal ties rather than the interest of masses, Kyoshi was markedly more impartial in her reprisals. She neither softened her hand for friends nor her enemies, an unwavering trait none of her successors can truly claim." His grip tightened around the rusty saber. "Neither should we."
It felt like another lesson, both for the assembled Dai Li as well as the teenage trespasser, one that reinforced everything Satchiko had already learned in this city. She had hoped to persuade the Dai Li to make a single exception, grant clemency to the four trainees who had been kind enough to teach Earthbending to someone incapable of lifting so much as a small boulder. Yet, just as Mayumi had warned, appealing to a shared heritage meant nothing before these secret police, whose priority for the state stands above any shared origin.
Even so, she refused to surrender. Drawing upon fragments of the White Scholar's lessons, she struggled to soften the inevitable despite possessing little talent for scholarly rhetoric. Embarrassingly, it felt oddly similar to haggling in a marketplace, a skill she had never truly practiced herself despite occasionally accompanying her sister to buy fresh salmon.
"Those four never shared any of Ba Sing Se's secrets with me," Satchiko declared, her voice carrying across the silent courtyard. "And until today, I knew nothing about your style of Earthbending."
Perhaps it was a white lie. Still, merely learning to nudge a pebble hardly seemed a threat worthy of the state's wrath. In the strict language of legal technicalities, the trespasser had never demonstrated anything remotely approaching the abilities of a genuine Dai Li agent. By the standards reserved for conspirators and seditionists seeking to undermine Ba Sing Se's harmony, it made little sense that someone with dangerous state secrets would willingly stumble back into the viper's nest merely to rescue four insignificant trainees.
"I will not deny the plausibility of your argument," the Inquisitor replied. "Let us assume those four over there guarded their tongues with utmost care, and that the Earthbending they imparted bore no resemblance to the techniques practiced by my colleagues or myself. Even then, such assumptions do nothing to absolve your deliberate rescue attempt, nor your unlawful intrusion into forbidden grounds, which is a crime whose punishment may include death." His expression remained as unreadable as polished stone. "Had this merely been the case of a lost soul wandering into this courtyard through ignorance, a lenient sentence might have sufficed. But the grave crime of espionage and the gathering of intelligence within one of this city's military facilities is a conduct that provides ample grounds for such accusations."
In any state or nation, unauthorized access to military or imperial grounds is among the gravest of crimes. Even the most merciful magistrate would find little reason to side with Satchiko after witnessing her attempt to free detained prisoners. Kingdoms did not tolerate strangers who prowled where their armies and enforcers are trained, for spies often heralded wars long before soldiers crossed the border. Ba Sing Se in particular had learned that hard lesson all too well when only a handful of impostors masquerading as allies seemingly brought the impregnable city to its knees from within.
"Then I am not plotting rebellion!" Satchiko quickly emphasized. "I don't often speak of honor, but perhaps that's exactly what brought me here. This is my fault in the first place. Leave those four out of it."
A faint sigh escaped the Inquisitor. Among the assembled Dai Li, that sound was almost startling. Even so, sentencing a Kyoshi Warrior would do little to lessen their organization's already tarnished reputation in the eyes of the common people and the very Avatar who had founded them.
Neither concern held much weight with the Dai Li.
"I suggest you concern yourself more with your own fate than theirs," the Inquisitor said. "The trainees possess far less excuse than one who knowingly entered quarters forbidden to the public. As for your own trespass, I foresee no inconsequential resolution. Those who intentionally breach our training grounds generally concern themselves only with how they enter the grave. If there is of them left."
Satchiko gulped, but refusing to yield even an ounce of fear before those who had twisted Kyoshi's purpose into something unrecognizable. The thought that these silk-clad enforcers still claimed the legacy of the Avatar she revered remained almost inconceivable, especially when they are at this moment prosecuting the very custodians of her final sanctuary of this material world.
She noticed the Inquisitor suddenly paused. Though he had already ordered the intruder to be escorted away, his attention drifted beyond the teenage intruder. The pair of eyes swept across the gathered Dai Li before settling upon a single figure concealed within the nearly indistinguishable gathering. Perhaps Satchiko isn't the only one who naively hoped that maybe a shared heritage with the same Avatar might somehow perform miracles.
The Inquisitor sighed once more.
"It seems the authority of my office is frequently underestimated by uninformed outsiders," he lamented openly, puzzling even his fellow agents.
Before anyone could seek any clarity, the caped Dai Li openly gripped the hilt of his sword. Steel flashed as the blade carved toward Satchiko with terrifying speed, its opening arc so violent that nearly every witness froze where they stood.
Satchiko could only stare, her face drained of color as death rushed toward her. Then, in a blur of green robes, one of the observing Dai Li burst from the gathered ranks and intercepted the attack.