I leave the cabin, and her and the brat behind to begin interrogations.
Circus Girl is at the steering wheel.
"Do you want to stay for this?" I gesture at the captain, and she seems to understand.
She leaves.
"Hmm," I say, as I look at the man – my victim – and study his flinch. He's very close to death. But not enough that it wouldn't be easy enough for me to heal him. He's aware that my hands could be his salvation. He looks like he has the will to survive.
Mai tried to soften him up earlier, with some food and niceties. He gave her information we already had, such as our location. What I need to know is exactly how to avoid Fire Nation troops and which flags to hiss when. Which ports I can go unrecognised.
"Alright," I tell him after a long, drawn out silence. I smile an eye-crinkling smile at him that serves me well as he cringes away as best he can. "I'm a very patient man," I heal his face so he's better to read, and he's both relieved and weary.
I would be, too if someone smiled at me like that with clear intentions of causing harm.
I'll be using that in the hopes of not having to actually hurt him more than I already have.
"That means," I take a knife to shallowly, casually cut his cheek, just slightly below and to the side of his eye. It feels like making the incision to remove a poorly healed wound's foreign object beneath the skin. Of course, he is a human, and I have never actually cut something to see if it will bleed. In this case, there isn't much blood left in him to rush to the wound, but the thin line of red is beginning to fill with it. "That I don't mind asking you what I want to know over and over," I add another, just below the first, and some of the blood drips from the first cut to the second.
Deliberately, I clot the wounds. It almost feels like I am manipulating water now, instead of blood. As if the blood itself recognised me as the one to bring it back into the body it belongs to.
His eyes are narrowed, pinched, really, and I doubt the first of his answers will be truthful.
But we have nothing but time, he and I.
"For every answer you give me, I will heal some of your wounds. How do you like that? You could use your arms again," I poke a finger to a piece of undamaged skin on his elbow.
He grits his teeth against the pain.
I doubt he's ever been tortured.
So it's a first to go around.
"Hmm?" I ask, prodding the same spot again. With a jerk, he nods, showing me his teeth in a grimace.
"Lovely," I heal a cut on his shoulder that runs deeply. Fibre knits together under my hands, and new, fresh pink skin lines his bronze arm.
"So," I drag over the map I found in his cabin, "Where precisely were we when we took over your ship?"
...
It dragged on.
When I'm done getting the answers to all my questions and more, I take special care to slice the healed tendons in the man's legs partway. He won't ever use them properly again. I may have decreed myself not-his-judge, and so I acknowledge that this is only my own desire for cruelty, that – even as I realise he may have embellished his tale, for whatever reasons – with every step he takes he will be reminded. (Reminded perhaps not always of what he's done. Or who he's hurt. But certainly of me. This is where I begin to have to look over my shoulders.)
I even contemplate taking his ability to procreate, but I'm not that much of a barbarian. I do like my nuts and castration, whatever the crime, must be one of the worst fates imaginable. I am not a good man. But I can't take someone's nuts.
Criminals are everywhere.
As it happens, this particular one has a wee bit of a record for scumbaggery stashed away beneath layers of deception. Not only do these pirates capture and sell slaves, but they do not hesitate taking mothers and daughters from innocent families for a night of fun - or two, if the wind isn't right for their course - if only so that the women's or girls' families aren't murdered. It's cruel and to them more fun because of the way some women will do their best to please them.
The only good news is that I now have a few locations where we can stock up, load off the pirates with bounties, and if the women want to, leave Earthkingdom behind. We will set a course for Ba Sing Se, though.
There is something to be said for corrupt soldiers on both sides. This, at least, won't change in any world with humans in it. There is a market for everything, and someone will be there to make a profit.
It's made even easier with Earthkingdom recruitment of bandits and common thugs. There is no close or precise screening for them, since there is no time for it, and usually, these recruits are sent to the front lines somewhere. Unless of course, they have friends who can send others in their stead and station them in towns or villages to do as they please in the name of the king.
The nearest such port is a week downstream.
Which gives me one week to find out whether I need to take the brat and run or let him go with Mai. What he wants and what I want may even be very different, incompatible things.
That's not much time, under supervision. There is little to be said for looking after the brat under such conditions. He can't talk while anyone who isn't Mai – who doesn't know he probably could – is watching and I don't want to when I won't be getting a response.
I decide to hum instead as I drag the captain to the mast to tie him up.
The brat seems to tolerate it well enough. I do wonder what kind of taste in music he had, back… home? Do I consider this a visit, still? Because home is where my loved ones are. And, most of them haven't moved over with me, I believe.
I like to think of myself as a rational, reasonable creature. At the very least, I am able to rationalise my behaviour to myself. I understand my own nature. In a way, I need to be needed. And this brat would need me. However, any plans I have for revolutions, and helping Aang would become infinitely harder to realise.
If he stayed with his sister who seems unwilling to even think of letting him out of her sight for long, he could grow, and I could do my thing. That means that I would need to have a thing, though, and the longer I remain at sea, the less time I have. By the end of the summer with the solar eclipse to come, things will be over one way or another.
There is no guarantee that we'll win, after all. Miraculous lionturtles with solutions for the Avatar might not be a thing this time around.
Once the captain's sufficiently tied up, I pick up the brat and go below deck.
I look the pirate crew over, checking them all. They are, of course, hungry, and thirsty, but no more than that, except for cuts and bruises - and a few burns, courtesy of Azula.
Gorou, with his arm and bending blocked is the worst off. I decide to get a look at the wound. He's sufficiently chained, and I've put the brat down a few steps away.
His dark eyes watch cautiously as I unwrap the bandage with practised hands. It sticks to the wound. The burn is pretty bad. I can see the beginnings of an infection. He hisses as the blood- and pus-soaked material comes off.
It's nasty.
"Hmm," I hum, and think about healing him. What do I have to gain? One less pirate with a fever, some gratefulness perhaps, and if I go about this properly, a favour.
On the other hand, a fever would make him pliant – sort of.
I decide to clean the wound, bandage it again, give him some water to drink, and leave it at that for now. Burns are best treated immediately, especially with an infection, but I would have to expend some effort and energy. I don't really have much of that at the moment. Only tomorrow would I try healing him, and only when I know I could sleep uninterrupted for hours.
He watches my motions with sharp eyes, and tenses when the water I bend to thoroughly clean the pus away comes into contact with the wound. "You're him, right?"
Surprised, I look at him silently. He stares back. Something about him seems familiar.
He's got the average Earthkingdom looks. Nothing that sparks recognition.
We stare some more. I can't find it. Well, this is getting us nowhere.
I resume redressing his wound. As I do, I notice a tattoo of a circle of sorts a bit further up his arm. A simple circle.
I used to have a tattoo. It was an impulsive thing, but I never regretted that pie coming out of another pie. Reminded me not to take things too seriously.
It was an easy life. Here, to take things lightly often means stupid mistakes that get you killed. That is, outside of the city of the Northern Watertribe. There, I was free to make as many mistakes as I liked.
...
Don't forget to throw some power stones :)
...
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