The Thief And The Healer

Episode 2: The Waterbending Scroll

The night was young, the air damp but not yet cooled by the darkness. The Blue Spirit sweat beneath his ceramic mask, the ghoulish tusks weighing heavy against his heated skin. Yet still, he dared not move. Not to wipe the sweat from his brow, not to ease the ache in his back caused by crouching for so long.

If he'd been able to prepare, he would have worn different shoes. The rubber-soled slim boots he currently crouched in were better for climbing and heists, not so much for springing a trap. When he'd started the night the plan had been to sneak into the museum to nab the revered sunstone for himself, but halfway there he'd heard a new treasure was on it's way that he simply couldn't resist.

A waterbending scroll.

He could only guess that the fanfare and challenging security the news had boasted about was meant as a distraction. The real prize was being transported by mercenaries, little better than pirates, so as to avoid announcing its arrival to the public.

It had been pure luck he'd lingered on the roof of the Cabbage Club when the workers had been taking their break in the alley.

"You hear about the barge coming in this evening? They say the industry hired the Searavens to haul a water bending scroll."

"No way, you believe in that stuff? And why would they hire thieves like that to transport something that high on the market?"

"Heard they paid them 200 gold pieces to do it."

Zuko had balked at the amount while the second worker below him swore. "I'd sell my left arm for that kind of money. Must be a real fancy piece of paper."

Understatement. 

Bending scrolls were some of the rarest artifacts of their time. Sozin, a previous leader of Phoenix industries, the richest company in the world, had only been able to procure one in decades of searching...and here was another on it's way into the company's clutches.

Normally the Blue Spirit wouldn't interfere with an industry shipment. They were his employers after all, but this was different. The Blue Spirit knew for a fact that the scroll currently in the possession of the Phoenix CEO, an airbending artifact, was locked in a vault and unavailable for viewing. Nobody had seen it in decades, since Sozin had permanently closed it off from the world.

So the Blue Spirit had decided he would give the water bending scroll back...but only after he got a chance to look at it first.

Bending had been a revered art and form of culture a thousand years ago, but over time industry had trumped people's love of the elements and the skill had died away. After years of ignoring their duties to the environment, the world believed they had lost their connection with the spirits that had granted them the ability to manipulate the elements. According to the world, benders were nonexistent. Even if you did manage to get your hands on a scroll, the odds of you being able to use it were slim.

The temperature started to drop. The Blue Spirit thought he had to sneeze and braced, but it never came, so he merely settled back into his shadow.

There was another reason he wanted the scroll beyond the chance to hold a priceless token of history in his hands. Unlike what humanity had believed for the past thousand years, the Blue Spirit knew benders still existed. Humans could form a bond with the elements as they had centuries ago and force them to submit to their will. And he intended to learn everything he could from the waterbending scroll.

He shifted on his perch, an outcropping that looked over the entire bay. The ship should be arriving any minute and he would have mere seconds to plan a stealthy infiltration and extraction. The idea sent adrenaline pumping through his veins and he shifted again, passing his weight from one foot to the other.