Chapter 35.1- And so the Dragons Danced

The Dai Li fought like police officers. In the show, I’d been so awed at how skilled they appeared. With their signature rock gloves that they used in apprehending targets. Now that I thought about it, they were probably the inspiration that Toph had leaned on in creating her elite Metalbending police force in the Legend of Korra canon. But all that did not matter, because Police officers were police officers- more suited for capturing and chasing criminals than fighting for their lives in a battlefield. They were fast, but not fast enough. They were efficient, but not lethal.

I jumped up, spinning into a backflip to avoid a salvo of rock gloves. I landed right next to one man. He turned to me, and I cleaved his head from his shoulders in the same movement and spun his body around to allow it take two rocks fists for me before I kicked it onto the man next to him. They were well-trained, but not used to seeing their counterparts fall like dominoes. The more I defeated, the easier it became. Death was new to them, while I was an old hand at dealing it. “Monster” one managed to cough out as I speared a heated hand through his left lung. The blood that splatted on my face instantly began to boil from the heat on my skin.

That word stuck with me as I spun into a kick that sent an arc of white hot flames that cut through three men too slow to get out my way. Monster. That was probably what I was. I’d grown up watching this show. This world. They never slaughtered themselves with the same abandon that I did. The more time I spent here, the more I killed. Did Iroh even ever kill this many? I was beginning to doubt.

I heard laughter, and it hit me that it wasn’t coming from me, but from Toph. She weilded her power with all the subtlety of a bull in a teashop, but I could see the signs of my tutelage in the way she fought. Every movement was efficient and led to the next. She stomped one foot, creating a row of spikes that stabbed through a few agents before she slid that same foot on the floor, making the earth the spikes had risen from rise into a wall that moved at a rapid pace, slamming into a few more agents.

She was a killer now. A killer, many times over, but she didn’t seem to care. Had I done that as well? Did it even matter that I had? It was my mother’s voice, I realised. The one that screamed in my head as I kicked a man and felt his ribs give way to my force.

A/N; The fight progresses as fights do. But is it really a fight? More like a slaughter. At least, until Long Feng releases the big dog.