The Hunt of the Wolf and the Serpent

"Uh, n-no. It's fine." Kano stammered, holding his hands up in an effort to reinforce his words of disinterest. "I... I really couldn't."

"Oh, come on, Water Boy!" the woman said in a sultry tone, drawing little shapes on his chest with a flirty finger. "I don't cost much. Strong young man like yourself needs a little... relaxation after a hot day."

"No, really, I have business... er... elsewhere. I... I need to get, um... I need to get going."

Kano liked women as much as any man, but this one was freaking him out. She'd been all over him since he'd handed the bartender a handful of coins for the information he was looking for.

He had heard stories of women who sold themselves to men for a night, but he'd never actually met one before. The north wasn't exactly a bastion of promiscuity. Regardless, hiring some woman to be a sexual partner wasn't exactly at the top of his list of things to do. He was perfectly happy with the kind of woman that'd stick around the next day.

Backing out of the pub, an uncomfortable smile on his face, he made sure to keep his hands up. He was kind of eager to get the hell out of there. He felt his back hit the door and, with one quick dart of his eyes, turned and darted out, closing the door behind him.

"Whew..." he said, hanging his head. That was disturbing.

"Apparently she headed down past this guard station up here and then turned down an alley marked by a black flag." Kano said, repeating what the bartender had said almost word for word. "I guess it's on the side of some building or something..."

Kano had started walking as soon as he finished his explanation, but stopped dead, flushing with embarrassment when Zai called him 'waterboy'.

"I... T-that isn't what it, er..." Kano stammered at him. "She ambushed me!"

As Zai passed him, he looked over at him with an uncomfortable look on his face. He didn't know if he wanted Zai telling people about that. But then again... Zai didn't seem the type to gossip.

"I suppose so..." Kano said, peering around the corner. It was a dingy little passage, to be sure. The shadows were not at all friendly. He had a bad feeling about all this. "This looks like the sort of place that those thug friends of ours on the mountain trail would hang out."

There was no mistaking that fact. This place was just all sorts of unpleasant.

"Who's worried?" Kano said, shrugging. He followed Zai into the alley. There wasn't much there except rat-cats. The little creatures seemed to watch them go in that way one watched a condemned man walk to his death. It was a little creepy.

As they went deeper into the alley, turning a corner and then another, no real dangers presented themselves. Regardless, there was a fine stream of waters swimming between the tips of his fingers like an undulating, clear snake. If anyone wanted a taste, he'd have the good ol' water whip waiting for them. When they reached the end of the alley, though, they found themselves standing in a completely enclosed and incredibly filthy courtyard.

"Maybe there's a hidden compartment..." Kano joked, folding his arms as he looked around the place.

"Wait." Kano said suddenly, sniffing at the air. "Smell that?"

There was a fresh wetness to the air that had nothing to do with the humidity. He knew the smell quite well -- it was clean, running water. Nothing else in the world smelled like that.

"There's moisture on the air." he said, pacing around, letting his nose guide him. "It's faint, but it's there."

He quickly decided that a spot some ten feet on the far side of the center of the yard was where the smell was coming from. Kneeling down, he noticed that, while this spot was paved in cobblestones like the rest of the area, there was an almost undetectable cut encircling about a five foot square area.

The time for playing hunches was now. He stepped off the slab and began performing the fluid motions involved with drawing water to one's self. Within seconds, a steady stream of clear liquid was issuing from the cracks. He froze the water around the edge of the slab and then commanded the newly formed ice to fly skyward. The effect was rather spectacular. The slab rocketed upward as if an explosion had occurred beneath it to send it up. He used his bending on the ice to once again control the slab, slowing it's descent and setting it down carefully and quietly on the pavement. Beneath where it had sat was revealed a staircase leading down into an underground passage. Kano smiled. He could hear the running water. With a peak down into the uncovered entrance, he managed to spot what looked like a small stone channel with water running in it, some sort of aqueduct.

"Well, that's interesting." he smiled, looking around at Hakota.

Kano followed Hakota down into the tunnel. At the bottom of the stairs, running along the wall was a channel with clear water flowing through it. There wasn't a single pipe or outlet leading into or out of the watery flow. If it was a sewer, it wasn't like any sewer he'd ever seen... nor did it smell quite as bad. Looking both ways, Kano pointed.

"I think whatever it runs to is this way." he said, starting down the passage. There was more of a chatter of water in that direction and it made him think that whatever was down here was seriously... big.

"A war factory..." Kano said slowly, looking down at the complex. It was expansive, lit by torches everywhere. It was a metropolis unto itself.

It was true that Kano didn't know much about things like hidden factories, but living a life closely tied to the chief advisor of a major world power's ruler did provide it's own brand of wisdom. He'd seen theoretical schematics for many Fire Nation devices. All of them had one thing in common -- a cooling system. Machinery heated up. Even in the fire nation, an overheated machine ceased working properly. His gaze fell once more upon the collection tank for the water, and he suddenly understood why they were piping in such large quantities of clean water.

"So there's a secret factory at the end of a dead end alley and Yumi was seen walking down it." Kano said slowly with a sigh. "I don't like the odds of that being a coincidence."

Kano followed along, quietly pulling moisture from the air just to see how much he could rely upon it. What with all the machinery in this place vaporizing water, it was thick in the air. He was able to condense a fist sized ball of water in the space of a few moment. Confident that he would have plenty to bend just about anywhere he went in this place, he let the orb of water quietly join the rushing flow in the channel running along their path.

"I've seen reports theorizing about secret factories like this..." Kano said, looking around, his voice barely more than a whisper. "They say the Fire Nation is developing some new weaponry."

Kano watched Zai work his magic in the shadows as the man took notice of them. He looked down at his own clothing. It was... vibrant. He looked up in time to see Zai grab the man. As he dragged the man to the ground, Kano looked around. Nearby was a large pipe covered in some dark grimy substance. With a flick of his wrist, he found it had a water content sufficient for him to bend. Silently and swiftly, he drew the substance off with fluid movements of his hands and bent it all over his clothing, dulling them instantly from shades of vibrant blue to grimy shades of who-knew-what that made him mostly disappear in the shadows he inhabited.

He approached Zai and his captive swiftly and upon light feet, making barely a sound. He certainly wasn't as sneaky as Zai, but he was at least quiet enough that no one outside of a few feet would get so much as a hint of his movements. He knelt down beside the pair of them.

"What are you going to do with him?" he asked Zai, wiping his hands on his grimy clothing and then on his arms, face, and neck, the last bits of him that were bright enough to illuminate him in the dark. He hadn't known Zai long, but he struck him as the sort who wouldn't think twice about tying a possible loose end with bloodshed.

"W-what?" Kano whispered urgently, following him with a quick glance around. There was no one else anywhere in sight. "You can't be serious!"

He moved up next to the pair of them just as they reached the edge of the coolant pool, holding an arm out so that Zai couldn't do what he said he would. He didn't really care if it was a joke, they didn't need to go around even considering killing people just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Moreover, it was basically his fault that the man had seen them in the first place.

"We don't have to kill him!" Kano said, still in his urgent whisper. "There are other ways of keeping him from raising the alarm."

He dipped the fingers of the arm he'd outstretched into the water and brought it up to the man's forehead...

Kano sighed, letting the water surrounding his fingers splash back into the pool of water. It didn't make a sound compared to the cascade coming down along the channel feeding the pool. He clambered over the wall of the pool and swam out into the middle, looking over his shoulder at Zai with a grumble before diving beneath the water's surface. That guy needed to learn how to communicate more.

Down to the bottom, Kano dived, looking around. He needed to make sure he didn't interrupt the flow of water into the machinery. They might not have heard a shadow taking down one of their fellows, but he was pretty sure the engineers working this place would notice if their coolant was cut off. He spotted the outlet pipe sticking through the wall of the pool near its base and swam to the far end of the pool from it.

With a twist in the water, he opened a large, spherical space within the pool, freezing the walls solid as he planted his feet on the ground. When it was complete, he found himself standing inside a good sized room of ice with the brick of the pool on one end. He continued to hold his breath. He hadn't brought any air down with him, and for good reason. If he had created a bubble from the start, he would have overflowed the pool and sent water everywhere. The first person who came along would have known something was up. This way, he was able to compress enough water into ice to keep the change from being apparent. With another fluid motion, he opened a slide-like tunnel up to the surface, allowing air to travel down into the space and creating a way for Zai to bring himself and their captive down. It created a problem for Zai, of course. How was he to keep the man silent as he sent him down the slide? Well, that was something he'd have to figure out for himself, now wasn't it? Kano folded his arms and waited for the others, staring at the opening he'd created.

Hakota-Zai

Hakota waited silently as Kano froze a dome within the water, even ensuring the water levels and pressure would not change so drastically as to become noticed. A gust of air flared his cloak as an icy slide appeared before him, the air about rushing to fill the void below the water. The man Zai held was fairly immobile now, relieved to hear he wasn't about to die, and might live to see the light of day. But did panic a little as the man who subdued him solidified the sand that had silenced his cries for help. The stone kept the poor factory worker silent as the deft hands of the dark figure pushed him into the icy slide, forcing him into the interrogation room below, followed shortly by the ever noiseless mercenary. Zai would wait for Kano to close the entrance before removing the ceramic muffle from the man. He stared up at the two from the ground."Wh-...Who are you two? What are you doing here?" He asked frantically, fear in his tone.

Mood:Indifferent. Condition:Fit and Well.

Link:Lee Hakota-Zai

[OOC: Terribly sorry for the delay, but I'm trying to write more now, and I had some ideas on where to go with this thread for the war.]