...

Xiaobao leaned back against the cold grey brick of a shuttered fabric shop across the street from the Silver Snake Playhouse. Beside the theater's glittering entrance there were several uniformed city guards leaning in much the same position as they provided their own security for the distinguished patrons inside. Xioabao saw those men give a few nervous glances down at the darker sections of the street in each direction as they thumbed their sword hilts. There were a lot of other people out tonight in Kuang Harbor and many of them were wearing black headbands.

Xiaobao was proud of the behavior of the town. Whatever this neighborhood watch had grown into, he knew that it was rooted in a core of anger, frustration, and fear. It would have been all to easy for any such organization to turn against those who had been calling them traitors for making their living off foreign trade. So far that had not happened. There had been a few close calls but as much as he hated to admit it, those college boys had given some good suggestions. Assigning patrol routes and regularly circulating postings kept people busy and moving. When they were doing something they did not feel as helpless in fear of fire, spirits, and the furious government.

Suddenly something caught his ear. It took Xiaobao a moment to decide what it was that had made him look up from the oil lamp lit paving bricks that his eyes had been absently focused on. On a night when even he was expecting to see the suggestion of spirits flitting through the shadows he had to assess a great many possibilities for a strange noise. But this sound was the slap of human sandals against the ground in an alley.

Across the street and up ahead, two men in the uniforms of theater staff came running out of the shadows into the pool of light spilling forth from the blindingly bright playhouse facade. Xiaobao reached out to bump his brother's arm for his attention.

"Look at that. Ayika and them must be making their move."

Xinfei looked over at the two who had run out, and he was joined by Ma'er and Mua. The two runners were wearing uniforms that Xiaobao had to guess were those of the theater workers. They must have fled as soon as the first accusation started flying inside. That was sensible of them but Xinfei still frowned. "Wait, why would Public Safety risk anyone like that getting out to spread rumors?"

Mua grunted dismissively. "Maybe you're overestimatin' the competence of..."

"No," Ma'er interrupted. Underneath his granite-like expression the earthbender was worried. "The boy is right. Yang should have had every exit watched and barred before there was even a hint of crisis. With the warning I sent him he would have taken no chances. Something is wrong."

The guards at the theater front had also heard the fleeing workers and turned towards them. Those workers, however, were not about to deal with any officers of the law at the moment. They were spreading the news.

"The Fire Nation is burning down the city! The masked spirit warriors are Islanders! They murdered the minister!" They yelled out to the town in general and the guards in particular before continuing to bolt on down the street.

Ma'er gave a short powerful curse before saying, "And that is why you lock down the exits. Yang isn't here."

Xiaobao felt the panic rising up in his chest. "Your Public Safety aren't here? Damn it, damn it!" This could all go up in flames if that story spread. Well, that is why Ayika had trusted him to have sensible people out here as a second line of defense. He ran forward into the middle of the street and waved his arms as he yelled out down the direction the theater workers were running at the black bands who were posted there. "Hey! Stop those crazy guys until we know what's going on!"

Xinfei ran up to Xiaobao's side with a pained expression on his face. "It's going to be a mess in there, and the girls are in the middle of all that! Tailang and his goons are probably going to firebend their way out to escape, and they've got no one to stop them! He'll cut through them!"

Their own benders they had as insurance were paying disturbingly little attention. Ma'er was looking out towards the city wall looming darkly in the distance. High up in the night there was a light flashing from the battlements far above the gateway fortress. Xinfei called out to him, desperate for information. "What's that say? What's going on?!"

The earthbender shook his head. "It is coded but such an obvious method is only used in moments of crisis. Something has kept Yang from responding to my message. Someone must be making a move in the city."

"Someone's makin' a move here too," Mua broke in, walking slowly in the direction of the theater front. One of the guards had opened the front door to investigate and now they could hear the sounds of screams and running feet spilling out from within. "I can feel it. The Masks are here in force!" She wavered slightly. "Grah! They're going to cross over. There are too many holes in this city!"

Another group of people, again mostly theater workers but with a few who looked like guests, burst running out of the building. Now some of the the city guards and the approaching volunteer black bands joined in the shouting on the street as confusion spread. The sounds of panic were rippling out into the distance of neighboring roads.

This stampeding fear could consume the town. Everyone who feared the Islanders would have their worse fantasies confirmed. Xiaobao roared out at the no one in particular or the entire night-enveloped world in general. "Hold on! We've got to hold on to the peace!" If the people of the town wanted to invest a no-one like him with authority then maybe, just maybe some might listen to him now when everything was falling apart. To do what, he did not know. The plan inside had failed.

Now Xinfei was running forward, bolting toward the theater doors.

Xiaobao shouted after him, "Xinfei!"

His brother only ran faster. "They're in there! Have to save them!"

Mama Mua sprinted along beside the boy, throwing herself into the heart of the turmoil of people hurrying out of the building. Then Ma'er was following those two. As he passed he called out to Xiaobao. "Do what you can! Hold for the government response!"

Then Xiabao was left in the street. He black band friends were running towards him but for that brief moment he was alone with the spectral shadows made by the glass housed lanterns whose flames were dancing a strange dance.

...

Chao Erliao stood on the edge of the stage with the spirit mask in his hand, backlit by hooded lanterns meant to illuminate the actors He was alive. Ayika saw the mask, recognized the purple marks, and at once knew the terrible mistake they had made. She remembered being pursued by a man possessed by purple wings. A man who had burst forth from Erliao's quarters after they heard a scream. There had been no mysterious attacker laying in wait, Erliao himself had put on the mask to fight Mua.

"Surprised?" Erliao glared up at Tailang in the upper balcony before him. "The Fire Nation's attempt on my life was a failure!"

Tailang goggled down at the seeming resurrected minister, for brief moment forgetting the slate of accusations Ayika's friends had just levied against him. "Erliao? Where have you been? I knew those idiotic students were not competent enough to have actually killed you."

"I was saved!" Here Erliao raised up the mask to present it triumphantly to the crowded theater. "The spirit gods of our great city have preserved me from your harlot assassin!"

The astonished crowd of theatergoers murmured. Some few had fled at the first hint of disruption but those who remained were entranced by the conflict that was unfolding before them.

Tailang leaned back slightly as he said, "Ah, you have completely lost it. And your old water witch sweetheart tried to kill you? Well, I had just thought she would be an embarrassment but I can not completely blame her." Now he suddenly remember the personal political crisis that had just erupted moments prior to Erliao's emergence. He turned to the astonished Zhangyi and Jiang near him in his balcony and resumed his powerful orator voice. "You see boys, you have been made into fools! All these accusations against me are completely baseless; the invention of petty, jealous men!"

Erliao yelled out, his voice shaking with fury. "No, you are not the leader of those called the Masks! Because I have reclaimed them from you!"

Tailang was momentarily silenced by surprise and confusion at this outburst. Erliao continued, growling out each word thick with anger and hate. "Did you think you could build a fake nationalist society under your secret control and I would not find out? It was clear to any idiot who bothered to look that those student fools were being used as puppets by someone. The so called nationalist movement was directed to create only harmless demonstrations and mild vandalisms that you could cite as evidence of persecution against your criminal enterprise of a Trade Mission! You must have felt so clever."

He rook a breath, his hands were trembling. Then Erliao resumed at a calmer pace. "The movement had to be taken out of your control. Doing away with your assistant Hiro, your degree of separation from them, was the easiest thing for me to arrange and after that your so called organization was mine. One little death to save the city and the gods themselves smiled on it! They provided me a timely whisper that told me how to turn your own spirit weapons against him and against you. These masks! Every day their power grows stronger as they are wielded by the just and righteous servants of our city! With them I had soldiers! I had warriors to strike back against the invaders and the corrupt! You have underestimated the spirits of our great culture!"

Ayika heard Lili's high pitched stifled scream from the opposite balcony and she looked down to see more audience members pulling out masks from hiding places within their clothes. There were a lot of them; far too many. Ayika gripped the wooden railing in front of her, as to her shaman's eyes the air seemed to ripple around that many masks held so close together. Ayika now knew that their plan had been doomed from the start. They had gotten it wrong, disastrously wrong. But at least Ma'er had arranged for government agents to be here. Surely they would...

"You murdered Hiro?!" Tailang was now raging back, completely oblivious to the danger of the masks below him. "Guards! Seize that man! He has just admitted to a capital crime in front of two hundred witnesses!" As the Representative thrust his pointing finger out, Erliao began to slowly raise the mask up nearer to his face. Tailang yelled out triumphantly, "It is a little late to disguise yourself, you..."

"No!"

The cry tore its self out of Ayika's throat as she felt her chest ache from pushing out so much air so quickly.

"Erliao, don't!"

People snapped up to look towards the righthand box, most of them staring at Mizumi first, expecting her to have spoken again. Ayika panted. If this was the man who had truly been behind the Masks' violence, behind them murdering Professor Lizhen and old Chouyu then she hated him. But she had seen what manner of being had chased Mizumi and her on the night of the Festival. It had not been an angry politically motivated man, but an inhuman spirit that wore him like a puppet. She had to try and stop that, even if it meant saving a murderer.

"Those masks are not powered by your cause or your patriotism! Your men stole the funeral mask of Ambassador Naruhama and disrupted a ceremony to quiet his soul before the city-god rituals! Your weapons are empowered by a half-deified Fire Nation ghost who is bringing down the barrier to the spirit world no matter what peaceful desires he had when he was alive! Last time you wore the purple mask on the festival we..." To explain Mua and Blind Dog Lord would take too long. Seconds were precious here. "You won't get the spirit mask off the same way again! The barriers are falling! If you put that mask on now you may be consumed forever!"

Erliao looked up and narrowed his eyes as he recognized the two foreign girls who had saved him from Mua's murderous intent. Consideration and a touch of fear flashed across his face. He looked down at the mask in his hands. The theater paused in a breathless confused hush.

Ayika breathed out, "Please."

Erliao did not look up.

"So be it. It is a sacrifice I gladly make to save my culture."

Then he pressed the wooden mask to his face and a sound beyond hearing screeched through the fabric of the world. Ayika felt a pressure behind her eyes as colored auras flared into life around Erliao and many others down on the lower floor. The chorus of screams told her that everyone else in the audience could see it too.

Phantasmal purple wings boiled into existence, flaring out from Erliao's arched back and then his masked face snapped up, focusing on Tailang with an animalistic intensity. He crouched and sprang, rocketing through the air like a dart from a bow. The possessed man then came crashing down; he smashed through the wooden railing of the upper box and lashed out at the seats and people there. A sudden blast of fire bloomed into existence as some firebender in the Exclusion party fought back. Erliao wavered before the force but the licking flames did not sear his skin, shielded as it was in the expanding body of the spirit that was using his as a doorway into the material world.

Mizumi sprang forward from her seat. In half a moment, her foot was on the railing as she prepared to climb around the outside of the balconies in a heartrendingly heroic attempt to join the fight. Panicked, Ayika reached out to clutch her but Mister Miohuito was faster. He seized his daughter's arm with enough force to cause her to gasp in pain as he tugged her back.

Mizumi yelled out, "Father! We have to...!"

Mister Miohuito did not say a single thing but bodily pulled Mizumi with him as he rushed for the exit from the box driven by fear-driven strength. Ayika ran after him, even as some poor victim from below was tossed through the air to slam heavily into the wall beside the box before falling back down to smash onto wooden chairs. Amid the first floor tables and in the Fire Nation box above, the other Masks had already lost focus on their political goals. The spirits that inhabited them had been drawn forth by the desire for the strength to fight and now they were fighting everyone and everything regardless of politics. These spirits were not the orderly gods of the city, but the wild and distant powers who now had a gateway for their inhuman power. They were playing, and humans were dying. Ayika ran and could only hope that Lili and the students could get away.

...

Lili staggered out into the street as a wide chunk of the front of the playhouse exploded into splinters behind her. The silver head of an ornamental snake went flying over her shoulder. As she had run through the shuddering halls of the theater she had briefly seen Ma'er and Mua enter the fray, joining their elemental magic with the bender members of the audience who had attempted to fight the Masks. A moment later, as she half ran, half slid down the lobby staircase she had seen some of those same well dressed benders lying as dark crumpled piles amid holes in shattered walls. Now she was outside but the screaming and roar of magical strength was no less deafening.

She felt a tug on her arm that was hard enough to hurt her shoulder socket and remembered the pressure of Xinfei's hand gripping her own. He had found her stumbling in the lobby and together they had managed to force their way out the front doors that were clogged with screaming, fleeing patrons. Somewhere along the line Lili had lost track of Mengre. She wondered if he had gotten out. She had known him in her father's house all her life. Now Xinfei was saying something to her:

"Come on! Maolin's out here! We'll get you away. Where's Ayika?!"

Lili looked back at the playhouse that already had smoke spilling out the holes that earthbenders or Masks had knocked in its walls. Some Islander firebenders had tried to fight back, but once the fire they summoned left their control and caught on material fuel it did not need their magic to sustain it. The building was going to be an inferno very soon.

Suddenly a thick arm wrapped around Lili's waist and half lifted her as she was hauled back across the street. Xinfei's face lit up with a small measure of relief as he recognized Xiaobao grabbing Lili and dragging her farther from harm.

"Maolin! Where's...!"

"Ayika and Mizumi got out! They're over there!" Xiaobao pointed over down the street. Lili managed to focus her eyes and saw Mizumi struggling against the grip of her father, resisting his attempts to make her flee. Then the stream of panicked running people that filled the street shifted and Lili saw Ayika standing firm in the middle of the brick-paved space, somehow by pure will forcing the crowd to part around her as her face turned back and forth in constant searching. Then she saw Lili and called out something at Mizumi behind her.

A man wearing a black headband ran up to Xiaobao. He was panting and heaving as he said what he had heard others say. "They said the benders are all dead! You've got to get out of here!"

"No!" Xiaobao was not the shy, polite laborer boy Lili had first seen. He was firm and somehow looked even taller and stronger than he already was. The black cloth band stretched across his forehead. "There are still people in the theater! We've got to try and help them!"

Others had different priorities. Some of the civilian earthbenders who had escaped were using their magic to raise up crude brick barriers in front of the first floor doors and windows, as if that could seal the masked monsters inside. The ladies among them struggled against the formal playgoing clothes that restrained their magical motions. A glance back through the remaining doors to the destroyed theater lobby revealed that the space was now filled with thick white smoke. Then that false smoke swirled together into a compacting stream of water drawn from mist, revealing Mua and Ma'er rushing out of the vanishing fog, vaulting over a rising earthen barrier. They were followed by Zhanyi and Jiang who did not manage to clear it with the same ease and tumbled across the rough ground beyond. Jiang yelled out in pain as he did so.

Mua coughed as her magic guided the floating water back into her large stoppered pouch before she bent over, propping her hands against her thighs for support. Ma'er did not take a moment to rest. He yelled out at the other earthbenders and their futile walls, "Forget that! Fires have spread! The building is lost! We have to bring it down!"

With that, he sank down into a wide low stance and thrust out his fists, causing the stone at the corner of the playhouse to crack and shudder. The other earthbenders were not government trained, just theater fans with the appropriate family lineage for the gift to manifest, but in the chaos like this anyone who sounded like they knew what to do was grabbed onto like a raft in a flood. The message spread out and the earth magic users ran to undermine more points of the structure.

Xiaobao ran up to Ma'er, shouting. "You can't! There are probably still people in there!"

Off to the side, Zhangyi unsteadily climbed to his feet. "If there are, none of them are getting out. Those masked...things are playing with the fallen like cats with injured mice. Erliao... what was Erliao, he beat down two firebenders and then focused on Tailang. I saw it break the Trade Representative's arms one by one, and then it snapped his neck. I think it was curious."

There were soot marks across Zhanyi's torn jacket and a bloody scrape on his forehead. Jiang looked worse for the wear, favoring his left leg, but he had been in Tailang's balcony box when the Masks attacked so the fact that he was alive at all was remarkable.

Lili felt dazed. She stood dumbly in the middle of the street, distantly wondering how their plan had gone so wrong. Then she was suddenly moving and it took her a moment to realize that Xinfei was pulling her.

"I've got to get you out of here," he said. "Ayika!"

"Here."

Suddenly, Ayika was at her side and the three of them were running over to Mizumi and her father. As soon as she saw them, Mizumi broke free from her father's pulling grasp and proceeded to reverse the action by pushing him in the direction he had been trying to make her go. She yelled something at him in the Islander language as they took off. Mister Miohuito yelled something back and Mizumi broke into the Kingdoms' language out of sheer frustration.

"We are not getting the carriage! Look around! Are you insane?! We run!"

They dashed down the dark and chaotic streets as behind them there was a creaking, rumbling crash as the earthbenders began to bring down the playhouse. Xiaobao, Zhangyi, Jiang, and the benders were not with them. They must have stayed behind to organize some sort of response from the black bands. Ayika called out the plan in between pants.

"We're going to the Exclusion! What was left of the Fire Nation party passed us a few moments back! Mizumi's dad can get us past the bridge and that place has their army people!"

They rounded a corner and from down another street they suddenly heard an outburst of screams. Then there was a familiar inhuman screeching roar. The Masks had escaped the theater and were loose in the town.

A few seconds later, as they ran down a long street under stars towards the distant orange glow of the Exclusion that was just visible over the roofs of dark tiled buildings, they heard the soft rustle of something flying overhead. Lili yelped in fright for a sudden Mask ambush, but then she wheeled around and saw three humans in the dark green robes of Public Safety bounded across rooftops towards the center of the disturbance, black against the starry sky. Each time they landed, the clay tiles beneath them reached up to cushion the fall and then launch them off again in less than a second. Their bounding path was heading toward the center of the disturbance. Lili prayed that those men stood a chance against what they would meet.

The fleeing party ran on and then the red towers of the Exclusion were in front of them. The illuminated forest of tall buildings now at once represented foreign danger and sanctuary. There were city guards in their green uniforms bunched around the entrance to the arching Bridge of Fire and beyond them on the bridge its self was another group of martial men, these dressed in red and looking considerably more committed to their assignment. Mister Miohuito began to yell out to the city guards as they approached but one hint of his accent led to that nervous detachment hurriedly opening up a path for the strange fleeing party. These men had no orders to keep foreigners from secluding themselves in their own territory.

The Fire Nation marines on the body of the bridge were more cautious, but after a brief shouted conversation with Miohuito they grabbed him and Mizumi to bring them in past their human barricade. However, they were less welcoming to Lili, Ayika, and Xinfei. Their reaction sparked Mizumi to start shouting out loudly in the Islander language. Whatever she said earned the three of them passage, though the welcome was filled with much less concern for their well-being. As she passed the soldiers, Lili noticed that many of these men were not armed. That meant they were firebenders and more deadly than any sword.

The strangle little group of theater refugees were just cresting the half way point of the Bridge of Fire when Mizumi began to call out her plan. "We must halt the magic of the Masks, somehow. If Mua can not summon up the dog spirit again then perhaps Fire Sage Huitzlan can aid! Even if it is a temporary fixing we must try. Ayika?"

The tribal woman nodded. "Yes. Tailang clearly had no idea about Naruhama's funeral mask and we have no hope of finding that now. Erliao is in no state to question."

"Hold it!" Mister Miohuito yelled out, startling his daughter and Ayika who had both seemingly forgotten there was anyone else there. He confronted Mizumi as his voice escalated to a roar. "Mizumi, what have you gotten into?! How could you accuse...?! And who is this tribal girl, really? No, we are going straight to the house and we are going to remain there. They attacked the Trade Representative!"

Mizumi understood her father's fear but she clearly still felt that she could not simply hide. She said, "Father, we..."

"No! You have put yourself in terrible danger! This must have something to do with that school if both Gaoli's daughter and the tribal are involved. I never should have brought you from the Nation but now..."

"Father!" Mizumi stamped her foot down so hard Lili could have sworn that the entire bridge vibrated. Mister Miohuito froze for a brief moment in the middle of his panicked paternal anger. Then Mizumi continued:

"There is a terrible spiritual threat to both our people and the people of the city. I am trying to solve it. Ayika knows more about spirits than anyone here and together with Fire Sage Hutizlan we are going to stop this magic before more people get hurt. I love you, and I am sorry, but there is no time to adequately explain things to you at this moment!" There was a moment of shocked silence followed by an interruption:

"Tailang stole some shaman masks for a conservative group he secretly controlled but he didn't know the true spiritual power. Erliao figured it out and desecrated the funeral of Naruhama to call in spirits and steal control of Tailang's men but now the spirits are too powerful to be controlled and everything's messed up."

There was a brief pause. Miuzmi blinked. "...Yes. Thank you, Ayika."

Mister Miohuito let out a single word, "But..."

Mizumi interrupted. "Get back to the house. Organize protection for the staff. Ayika and I will go to the temple and hope they can help banish the spirits, at least for tonight. I have seen such a thing done before."

Mizumi and Ayika did not wait for Mister Miohuito to say another thing. They broke into a sprint and hurried off the bridge, down to the Exclusion streets, striking off deep into the compact settlement towards the Fire Temple at the opposite end. Lili began to move to follow them but there was a gentle tug on her hand. Xinfei quickly let go as she turned back to face him.

He said, "You'll be safe here, Lili. I'm sure these people will burn down half a ring before they let anyone in to harm their own."

Lili noticed what he was not saying. "And you are here too so it will be all of us who are safe here."

Xinfei threw up his arms. "I don't understand any of this spirit stuff! How could I help Ayika with any of that?" He turned back to the Kingdoms side of the bridge. "But my brother's out there. All my people are out there, such as they are, and if I can't fight any Masks at least I could maybe do something while you girls are talking to priests and ghosts. Stay safe."

He actually managed to take three steps back up the bridge before a soft, smooth hand gripped onto his wrist like a vice. Lili glared him in the eyes, all the bewildering fear she had been drowning in melting away beneath the righteous fury that he would try something like this.

"They are my people too! This is our city!" She took another step closer, looking up very slightly to meet his wondering stare with her own furious one. "I don't know anything about spirits. I don't know that Mua woman or the Fire Sage. Mister Miohuito doesn't want me and I think Mizumi and Ayika have forgotten me entirely. But I know that I would be able to stay here huddling in safety for about ten minutes before I could not stand it any longer! I ran, but that was a mistake. Let's go find Xiaobao, Mengre, Zhangyi and the others!"

The dockworker and the merchant's daughter held still for a long moment. Then they nodded together and began to run back across the the bridge. They pushed past the startled Fire Nation marines who were not expecting anyone to come from behind them. Lili called out at them as she ran by. "Tell Mizumi Miohuito that Lili Gaoli has gone to join the Black Bands! Find us if she can!" Then Xinfei and her were running off to the town. Lili spent a last spare thought hoping those men had been able to understand her language.

...