Shinri sat before her meager campfire, staring into the flickering orange and yellow, her expression dark and grim, tired.
The night sky was clouded over and moonless, leaving everything around Shinri’s fire pitch black; the eyes of curious and cautious animals would occasional gleam as they drew close, then, they’d scurry away.
She looked natural in her repose by the fire, a woman who knew her country, the Earth Kingdom, intimately enough not to be frightened by the flora and fauna at nightfall; her sun darkened complexion was, perhaps, most telling to her affinity to wander barefoot across the continent.
Wandering was typical of an active mercenary, especially one that dipped her feet in sabotage and thievery if the pay was good.
Shinri breathed an exhausted sigh; her sinewy form was covered with various signs of wear and tear; her left arm was swathed in bandages, her sharp brown eyes bruised and swollen, her full body, green robe battered and torn.
A bandage was wrapped about her forehead, made faintly pink by the blood it had checked, her lower lip was split, both of her gaunt cheeks sported half a dozen welts; Shinri had straightened her broken nose that was still red and purple.
Shinri placed her right hand tenderly to her left shoulder, the robe and yellow surcoat there had a black char mark.
Shinri dwelled on her parents, they were distant silhouettes in her mind but served as a balance to her thoughts when they were in turmoil; she hadn’t seen them since she was nudged by them into the world of violence and backstabbing that she was trained, groomed to inherit.
Her mercenary parents could be dead or just simply retired to Whale Tale Island but that was neither here nor there as her thoughts were now clear and focused enough to regard an immediate issue at hand.
Shinri reached out next to herself and plucked up an old, weathered scroll; she held it level to her eyes, straight and vertical, perched between her fingertips.
She regarded it levelly.
It had been the one consolation to a rather haphazard and violent affair; it had begun three weeks ago, a contract for her to infiltrate into a small excavation party up in the mountains, snag some rare valuables and drift away.
Straightforward really; the subsequent attacks from a band of thieves and grave robbers was to be expected, the excavation party had made deals with some of the local Earth Bending masters in arrangement of such things occurring.
Then things became dicey two days ago.
Her contract, apparently, decided to try and overwhelm the excavation to scoop up all the valuables that she had described in a report she had sent back; her contract had also attempted to kill her in the process.
A Fire Nation platoon that had been scouting the mountains at the time also descended upon the party, trying to appropriate the goods for themselves amidst the chaos; all they did was bring more chaos into the situation.
Shinri had banked on something like this happening, having been in similar situations before; she could rationalize all the players present; her contract simply acted on knowledge she had given and tried to cut her (literally) out of the deal. The Fire Nation did have a colony not too far from the excavation site, so the platoon’s appearance was to be expected as a possible outside threat.
The Dai Li was a surprise though; kind of far from their typical jurisdiction, they swept across the violence like a tidal wave and left little behind save peaceful, gravely silence.
The “cultural authority” established its superiority; Shinri would be glad if she never saw another Dai Li agent again but she knew that was probably not a likely thing to bank on, after all, she was being followed by someone or a lot of someones.
Regardless, she had narrowly escaped into the wilds during the confusion caused by the Dai Li; had gotten lucky and gotten away for the moment with a single piece of what the excavation party had dug up and a list of various wounds.
It was a frightening discovery, the small scroll, with drawn depictions of a synthesis, a schism of the Avatar entity, the text of which described as the Revenant, a sort of shadow of the Avatar; a bender-less entity opposite to the master of all elements that could be either used as a replacement in case of an unexpected death with an element in the line being non-existence or, the Revenant could be used in close proximity to the Avatar to mute it’s bending completely.
“Are you the real deal I wonder…” She mused, knowing that this was a potentially dangerous, upsetting concept that could induce mania into an already volatile era of war and bloodshed.
“…or some horrible joke, a wild theory someone considered valuable enough to bury?” She finished.
Shinri for the first time in her life felt all thirty years of her life, heavy on her shoulders, she could feel forty, only three years away, lean down at her from the impending future.
What she held was worth plenty to just about anyone, a collector of antiquities, Fire Nation spies looking for a way to undo the Avatar; the Avatar would possibly pay for it…
Then again, was it really worth the trouble, worth the wealth; in most cases, Shinri wouldn’t have perished a thought at pawning it off or using it for extorting, blackmail.
She continued to stare at it with darkening, pensive eyes.
“I can only imagine you as a secret, something someone discovered in a brief moment of honest contemplation, an Air Nomads pilgrimage perhaps and alas he uncovers a revelation and writes you down…” Shinri surmised.
“But, if you are true you are dangerous to a society that only believes in an Avatar that stands solidly alone, a world that must believe in one twelve year old boy, one Avatar. Period” She says, turning the scroll about in her hand, pondering.
“The world can’t afford you getting out, I can’t afford to sell you and I can’t just leave you lying about either, so…” Shinri flicked her wrist, casting the scroll into the fire.
“you will reside in my mind and cease to be when I cease to be,” Shinri said, running her had through her slightly overgrown, black hair, she would have it cut back into its wedged bob style when she made it to a town.
The scroll was consumed completely in moments as Shinri groaned, standing to her feet on tired, uncertain legs.
Arrows, spears, swords, knives, fists, Earth Benders and Fire Benders, she’d faced them all in the violence that descended upon the excavation, suffering many injuries, and the one consolation prize she managed to take she let burn before her bruised eyes.
Shinri found herself smiling at going against her profit driven nature.
All five feet and a couple inches of her she put behind the effort to maintain balance as she adorned her gold, wire frame glasses and left the fire for the darkness; she was still being followed, still in horrific physical condition from her conflict. The fire, she simply needed the fire as a diversion but it also helped her in an important decision, perhaps her most important one.
“A good secret should remain a secret,” She breathed wearily, dissolving into the night.