Living in a Legacy [ON INDEFINITE HIATUS]

Chapter Twelve: It Tastes Like Candy

"Su, stay close to me," Lin instructed the younger girl. "And don't start dancing in the middle of the street."

"But why not?" the girl whined. "There's no one even here!"

"You could dance your way into a car, or into a person." Her sister placed a firm hand on Su's shoulder and pushed her forward, keeping her from stepping off the uneven sidewalk. "There are some untrustworthy people here that you don't want to run into."

"I would know," Bumi added, albeit a bit unhelpfully. "I used to pass this random guy in a bush every day on the way to school in fifth grade. He offered me fish one time... Had really bad hair. Worse than mine, even..."

"Ooh, can I meet him? He sounds nice," the seven-year-old chirped, wrenching free of Lin's grasp. 

"Just stop talking, Bumi." Lin rolled her eyes and pulled Su back to her as she started to skip ahead and nearly tripped. "I have a job to do. I promised Mom I would keep you from dying, and I intend to keep that promise."

"Yeah, you would, because you're so perfect and Mom's favorite child..."

Kya groaned as the sisters began to argue. It was as if a simple word from one would set the other in a frenzied rant about protecting this or having freedom that. It was annoying, to say the least, and was slowly chipping away at the waterbender's patience, bit by bit. If they didn't get captured by the end of today, she was sure that it would snap all together. 

To distract herself from their constant bickering, she waterbent water from a small puddle on the ground and swirled it around, watching the light reflect off of it. However, she quickly let it splash to the ground when she watched gunk and dirt move around in it, too, and that the liquid wasn't clear, but a grayish color. 

She supposed she should have expected as much. The entire alleyway that they were walking through was nothing but dark, dank, and dismal. Instead of the tall, towering buildings they were used to craning their necks to see in the center of Republic City, small, one-story houses crowded the side of the street. Some had cracked or broken windows, smashed in by thugs out for petty revenge, Kya reasoned. She wanted to find them and teach them a lesson, especially when she came upon a small store with non-bending slurs painted on the banner hanging outside. 

"It's hard to believe that a city like this one can be so nice in some parts, but so... terrible in others," Kya said, frowning at a pile of broken bottles on a square of sidewalk. 

"Even a rose has its thorns," replied Izumi quietly, watching the streets with as much sadness and disgust as the rest of them. 

"And it's populated with more non-benders than anyone," Lin added, "so the Triple Threat Triads can simply pop in and take whatever they like without much of a fuss."

"Can't the police force do... something?" the Fire Nation princess asked softly, regret shining in her amber eyes as she glanced at a building covered in boards. 

"They do," snapped Lin defensively. "But there's crime in other parts of the city, too, and they can't be here all the time. It would freak out the people who live here to station guards on every street corner, and remind them of when the war was going on."

Kya had to remind herself sometimes that the serious girl was merely thirteen, as she tended to act well beyond her years. Unlike Bumi, who was nineteen but may as well have been twelve, by the way he treated, well, everything. 

"Hey... has anyone else noticed that we haven't seen a single person since arriving here?" Tenzin asked, eyeing the empty streets and abandoned buildings. "Like... none."