lavanya_six | FANFIC -- TLA-2: First Rumblings

Title: TLA-2: First Rumblings
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Characters: Lao Bei Fong
Rating: T
Summary: Lao has a new enemy, and he wants to find out just how dangerous he is.
Notes: I usually don't preface fics, but this one needs it. This drabble is set in a AU!movieverse outline I'm writing, called TLA-2, that's an attempt to reduce all of Season 2 into a coherent two hour movie. It's more a thought experiment than an actual fanfic, but that's why the Bei Fongs live in, well... you'll see. So, heads up, this fanfic is a major AU.

The clothes were a hurdle, because Lao didn't known anything about how the peasants of the Lower Ring dressed. Here his good friend Yuan Run Pang came to his rescue. The Agricultural Minister possessed a predilection for the lowest sort of social clubs and the young boys that frequented them. Lao considered Yuan's nighttime habits too easily exploitable by the ambitious new Grand Secretariat, but here they were Lao's salvation.

The trick, apparently, wasn't to dress like Lower Ring trash but like Middle Ring garbage. Lao's good posture and cleanliness would be taken as a sign of the pitiful airs that Ba Sing Se's middle class put on in an attempt to imitate their betters. His only consolation wearing tacky clothes with such low thread count was that he would be the best 'imitation' of Upper Ring nobility that the underclass had ever seen.

When the monorail stopped at Zai Station, he almost exited the car on reflex. Lao had rarely ridden out past the Middle Ring, and when he did he took an express train through to the Agricultural Zone.

The car grew more crowded the longer he rode, and the passengers' clothes grew sweaty and their faces smudged with soot and grease. In the Inner Ring, Lao had to deal with waves of people crushing against him as they filed the car to capacity. It was hot. It stunk. Lao was honestly relieved when it came time to disembark the monorail and walk the foreign, garbage-strewn streets of the Inner Ring. The air was smokey and smelled of rot, urine, and sewage, but at least it was cool and he could move freely.

Walking the streets shoulder-to-shoulder with the underclass, Lao was reminded of the threat posed to the city's future by its newly appointed Grand Secretariat. Here and there, painted in gigantic characters across the sides of buildings, were the words that had catapulted the Dai Li's leader to the Grand Secretariat's office:

THERE IS NO WAR IN BA SING SE

It was breathtaking. Sublime, even. Nothing in life was so precious as purity and Long Feng had dreamt up the purist lie, the ideal lie.

With refugees packing the Lower Rings like vermin in an animal carcass, social unrest had arisen. The diversity of the Earth Kingdom was to be appreciated, yes, but preferably when people from all corners of the continent weren't forced to live in close quarters. Different customs - cuisine, clothing, accents - had been a match set to the tinderbox of unhappy peasants already angry about losing their old homes to the Fire Nation.

Lao had been skeptical that the Dai Li's patently false propaganda could quell the growing incidence of riots, but it had worked. Lao pondered why for a long time before he finally concluded that lower classes weren't smart enough to keep more than one thought in their head at a time. If a man in a uniform said there was no war, then there was no war.

Lao hadn't considered such total control over the Lower Ring possible, not without stationing soldiers on every street-corner. Yet the ranks of the Dai Li had not expanded. Lao knew this because his allies in the Finance Ministry oversaw the Dai Li's budget, both the official one and the unofficial one that didn't exist. To accomplish so much with so little... Long Feng was skilled, low birth or not.

Yet even the most sterling lie wasn't enough with the infamous Dragon of the West now camping on the Outer Wall's doorstep. So the Grand Secretariat was trying a different approach to pacify the huddled masses and get them to think about something other than the war.

Lao wanted to know if it was working. Thus this field trip.

He found his destination easily. The new four hundred foot tall statue of King Kuei was hard to miss, and the equally new stadium beside it was no less noticeable. The building's lines reminded Lao of his opponent's great lie: clean, pure, and distinct. There was no sense of Ba Sing Se's long history in this monument dedicated to base appetites. It had been thrown up in a hurry once word of General Iroh's impending campaign had reached the government's ears.

Earth Rumble Stadium.

For several minutes, Lao endured being jostled in a ticket queue before finally entering the arena. It was dizzying. There were people everywhere, more people than Lao had ever seen in any one place before. Merchants hawked food, drinks, candy, clothes, and... giant fingers? Taken all together, it was like a city shorn of homes and stuffed into a single building.

Lao took his seat midway up one of the many rungs on the stone seating terrace. Looking around at the eager faces of the peasantry - wait, people actually brought children here? - Lao was reminded that the arena's terraced seating was similar to what was used in rice farming. Which made sense, even if Long Feng was farming compliance and not rice.

It started.

Lao was not impressed.

The Earth Rumble amounted to two bad actors slinging insults at one another across a bare stone stage, then trading the insults for big rocks. One man won. The other was beaten senseless. Then a new, fresh contestant was unleashed on the winner. This was repeated, again and again.

The crowd ate it up.

Lao had to admit that Long Feng knew his sort of people well. The Earth Rumble was exactly the sort of nonsense that only a low-born man like Long Feng would think of organizing. While barbaric, it showed how he pandered to the masses like a virtuoso.

The large-than-life arena imposed a sense of command. The statue of King Kuei gave attendants a sense of official approval to the whole dingy affair. The virile displays of earthbending reinforced the idea of the Earth Kingdom being strong enough to defeat its enemy. It all played on the sensibilities of the underclass. But such insights into their minds were only to be expected from Long Feng. He was Middle Ring garbage, and they devoted so much of their mental efforts into imitating the nobility and forgetting their own backgrounds that they developed a curious self-awareness. It made them a strange sort. Outwardly strong but, past that thin shell, brittle.

Yet sitting in the stands, letting the energy of the crowd wash over him, their alternating waves of elation and outrage, Lao began to feel many conflicting sensations. Overwhelmed. Excited. Exhausted. Sick. Young. Stringing all those emotions together was an unexpected cord of brotherhood, a connection with these thousands of strangers created by collectively experiencing the drama unfolding onstage. And that made Lao feel...

Afraid.

The Earth Rumble worked.

How could the peasants be fooled so easily? It was obvious that the government had funded this stadium, allowed these games, but the people still came?

Yet Lao had felt himself be drawn into the communal experience, even knowing full well the political staging behind it.

Yes, fear was the logical response.

Something needed to be done about Long Feng, that much was now clear. The Dai Li had the Lower Ring well in hand, the Middle Ring might soon follow, and if it did Long Feng wouldn't be satisfied. Lao knew that because he himself wouldn't be, and he was the better man.

What would become of Toph, his precious baby girl, if she grew up in a city run by that thug? A city - a world - where certain types of people who didn't know their place in the natural order of things... no. No. The Avatar was dead, the world was unbalanced, but Lao Bei Fong would die before he stood back and let things finally tip over into the abyss. If the world came undone, it would not be because of Long Feng's ambition.

This Lao swore.

Down on stage, a man was knocked to the ground and began to bleed profusely from a head wound. The crowd cheered. Lao shuddered.