Remember The Name (Maybeth)

"And there they stood. A hundred battle-ready bandits, all guarding their stolen loot, all armed tot he teeth, all veterans of a thousand raids. A real army. I took them head on, not knowing if I would come out alive or if I was about to meet my doom," Tamura was sitting in the dirty and crowded local tavern of a dirty and crowded town in the heart of the Dark State. The tavern was small, but it seemed the entire village had crammed in. When she had accepted the boy's offer of a drink (she never refused a drink when it was offered for free) it was relatively empty, but her tales had attracted an audience. The main room, where the customers and the bar were was a simple square with the bar facing the door and large, grubby windows on the other two walls. Tables were scattered about the room with no real pattern. The bar's counter was about as filthy as the floor, and the barman behind it, a shriveled old stump of a man was obsessively rubbing the inside of a glass with a towel. The only problem was that the towel was too dirty to do any good, only making the glass dirtier with each swipe. Tamura loved this kind of place.

She had just been passing through, but a boy had heard her name and recognised her. She hadn't known her name as a bounty hunter had traveled about so much, but the young man had insisted on buying her a drink and hearing some of her stories, and so it was that the after noon had rolled on by as she regaled the people in the tavern wit tales from her stories career. At first her tales had been close to reality, but the more of a crowd she attracted, the more people seemed to want to hear ridiculously wild tales of insanity and the more she embellished the truth to give them what they wanted. As it turned out pleasing the crowd came with its own perks as they kept paying for her drinks.

"I fought valiantly, striking down all that came close to me, and many more that never had the chance with my bending. But it wasn't enough. I was tiring and each new enemy that faced me was fresh and rested while I was slowly being worn down into exhaustion. As I begun to believe I was doomed the spirits smiled upon me. A dragon flew by, incinerating part of the surrounding forests and grasslands, the sudden confusion gave me the opening I needed to finish off the remaining outlaws."

"You took down a hundred outlaws with the help of a dragon?" one man in the audience called out. he sounded disbelieving. There were always doubters, those intelligent enough to doubt the grand tales. Sadly for him most of the rest of the crowd were too absorbed in her tale to even give its outlandishness a second thought.

There were many calls of: "Let her finish!" and "Will you shut up!" but she held up her hand to calm the accusation and turned to look the man who had questioned her story dead in the eyes, locking her one good eye with his two.

"Why yes. I did. If you doubt my words I would gladly take you on in single combat to prove my worth. Or would you be too 'gentlemanly' to face a woman in combat? And by gentlemanly I do mean cowardly," her retort was just a lot of wind really, she had no real argument or evidence and when it came down to it she was just calling him a weak idiot, not much of an argument, but she did have the crowd on her side, and to the crowd her words were enough. The heckler disappeared from her sight, lowering his head in shame as he was booted out of the bar.

"As I was saying, I managed to take down the rest of the posse, and salvaged the carts with the stolen goods without losing the draft animals. Because of that completing the job was as easy as leading the animals back to town and collecting my rather sizable reward," she finished her story with a smile, taking a long drink of her pint.

"That's incredible," the boy who had paid for her first drink exclaimed, the rest of the crowd agreed. What was truly incredible to Tamura was how easily these people were gobbling up this crap.

"What happened to the dragon?" another listener called out.

"It simply flew off. The sound of combat had probably woken it up and it just came around to display its rage. It had no real stakes in the battle and so it left. I inquired with the townsfolk and they told me they knew of him and that they had nicknamed him Jonathon."

"That's an odd name for a dragon," another man piped up.

"I thought so too," Tamura admitted, letting a genuinely amused smile grace her lips.  She was sure the little mercenary kid that had helped her in the real version of that story would have appreciated being turned into a mighty dragon. Or maybe he wouldn't have. She couldn't really say for sure. She had only known him for a few hours after all.

The sudden burst of laughter took Tamura by surprise, both by its mere presence and by its intensity. That wasn't even one of her craziest tales. She wondered if she could get whoever was laughing to pee themselves in glee if she started rolling out the more absurd ones. That thought was quickly relegated to the back of her mind as she realised now wasn't the time for that sort of thought.

"Nice... huh... Very nice! So Jonathon, Mr. dragon woke up and came to watch over ya! ha ha ha...  I haven't heard anything like that in my whoooole life... Battling with an army of bandits? hahahaha!!! Maybe even killing a whole nation? You have talent! You are good seriously! I mean, you people are seriously gobbling up this crap?" the crowd parted, angry murmurs passing through the sea of people like an electric charge. Tamura could now see her newest heckler, and was somewhat surprised to find what she could only describe as a little girl. Her sentences was intermittently punctured by bursts of laughter, but her tone soon turned from amusement to anger.

"Concratulations! For I don't believe a word you say!" Tamura remained silent throughout the tirade, just letting the child vent as she pleased. Her only reaction was a small, but fiercely predatory smile tugging at her lips.

"I thank you, for your kind compliments," she replied, dipping her head in a small gesture of greeting, intentionally ignoring the sarcasm. The crowd had expected something a little more aggressive and they were silent as she spoke in a level, pleasant tone. "I do feel the urge to correct you though, the dragon was only passing through. Much to my chagrin he didn't elect to stick around. A shame. He and I made a good team, and I could have used a pet dragon," upon hearing that Von, who had been nesting in her lap, bristled and glared at her angrily but Tamura ignored him. Several men from the crowd laughed heartily at her retort.

"Wait, what do you mean you don't believe me?" Tamura added in fake sadness after a short pause, going so far as to put on a very obviously fake pout. "Your opinion matters so much to me," the sarcasm in her tone was so heavy that even the most dense folks from the village caught on, and the entire crowd burst out in laughter, with Tamura joining them.

"But seriously, how could a little twig of a girl like you pretend to know anything about anything? You're just a child honey, does your mother even know that you're out? More importantly isn't this past your bedtime?"

"Yeah!" one man among the crowd shouted out. "This is a bar for adults, not kids!"

"Hear, hear," another one enriched drunkenly, swaying dangerously as he shouted out. Tamura put up her hands, immediately silencing the rabble before turning her attention back on the girl, smiling the most condescending smile she could manage without keeling over in laughter.

"Let the grown ups do the talking, and you take care to listen closely kiddo. Maybe you'll learn a thing or ten," she paused and was about to turn back tot he crowd, but she paused a second and swiveled her chair to face the girl's table full on.

"You know what, I'm feeling generous today," her hand dove into a pouch on her belt and took out a couple of coins which she tossed at the heckler. "Have another glass of hot milk kid, it's on me," she called out in the most condescending of tones. Again the crowd laughed right on cue at that. In Tamura's eyes her interactions with the girl was finished and she turned her back to her, ready to start another crazy tale.

While she had been speaking Von had jumped off her lap, still holding a grudge over the dragon pet comment. He made his way over to the girl's table, sniffing at her feet for a couple of seconds, and he smelled didn't please him. He could sense resentment, anger and many other things, but most importantly he gauged the possibility of this girl becoming violent to be rising rapidly. As he did he rushed back to Tamura, scampering up her leg, to her shoulder where he perched himself, facing the girl and growling.

Tamura recognised Von's sign. It was what he always did when he sensed danger. He wasn't always right, but more often than not his evaluations were spot on, and that was enough to get her excited at the prospect of a good fistfight.

Tamura had quite literally leaped from her chair as the stiletto had been thrown, the sheath of one of the Ladies leaping up to be prepared to lock the incoming projectile, but the movement was not required. The knife went sailing past the crowd, impaling someone's hat and pinning it to a wall, the hilt of the knife quivering in place as the point buried itself in the wooden wall. The crowd was silent and still. On one side of it Tamura was standing with one of her sheathed katanas in her hands, on the other was the mysterious girl with her hands aflame.

"You absolutely sure I'm that young?" Tamura didn't reply immediately. She was just shaking her head in disappointment, there went her quiet evening of free drinks and fun. The door of the bar slammed shut as some in the crowd rushed out. They were probably going to report this to the local authorities. The little girl was a fool to start a fight with such an open show of strength. A bar brawl had certain unspoken rules to it. Only fists and bottles as weapons, starting a fight in a bar by throwing a knife was, by those unspoken rules, not a bar brawl, but simply a declaration of lethal intent. The remains of the crowd weren’t going to take that lying down, and several of them looked ready and willing to hurt the girl.

Behind the counter the inn's owner was looking very worried. Bar brawls he's dealt with before, they broke tables and chairs and caused other slightly problematic damages. This was shaping up to become a full on fight though, with injuries and possibly deaths and that was much worse it brought inquiries and paperwork and drove business away. He caught Tamura's eyes with a pleading look and the air bender gave him a small nod. She didn't mind full on battles, but not in a bar filled with a crowd made up of innocent men and boys. She slammed her sheathed weapon down on the table several times as she used her chair as a step to get onto the table. Everyone's attention switched to her.

"Okay everyone, time to chill a bit. This is my cousin," she pointed to the mysterious girl, as she leapt off the table, landing squarely on the ground. The now considerably diminished crowd parted to let her through. She sidled up to the girl and passed a hand around her shoulders, dragging her out of the bar. "She's never had to drink before, she's a little bit out of her mind," she explained as she pulled the girl out of the inn.

"She just had milk," one of the men present challenged. "She doesn't look drunk at all," another enriched.

"Yep. Yep she did. Totally chugged a keg of wine before coming in though," she replied hurriedly as she got both of them out of there, the angry eyes of the customers kept squarely on them as they stepped out. Once outside in the chill winter air Tamura pushed the girl away from her.

"What the hell did you think you were doing back there you imbecile? Are you trying to get yourself killed? Because that's a pretty good way to go about it," Tamura hissed at her. "You picked a fight with everyone in that bar. Those that didn't run out were more than willing to tear you apart and as good as you may or may not be keeping a whole crowd of people at bay isn't easy, or even possible. More importantly you just ruined my evening. Care to explain yourself before I decide to break your pretty little neck and dump you in a shallow grave?”

She had been patient, by her standards, holding back the burning anger as she dragged the girl out of the inn. Now they were out of the bar and away from the civilians a little bit of anger was just fine. On her shoulder Von was still bristling and growling angrily.

Tzintza looked down. She did not react at all, even when the woman tragged her outside, saying another pack of lies to the uncontrolable crowd. She knew the situation was off control because of her, but she rarely got to admit her flaws and mistakes. Before a second thought, she picked out her sword, and stared at the woman with cold hatred.

-Just because one is young, doesn't mean, one is unexpirienced, neither one has no life stories. But you, in that age, aren't ashamed to tell such lies to those people. Pitty... She said coldly.

She stepped forward, closer to the woman, looking her deep into the eyes now.
- I challenge you. I challenge you to a match to the sit. Whoever falls down, has to admit the other as superior! No bending tricks or such stuff allowed! She said.

Tzintza was stubborn, and could easily go mental, just like a little kid. But in these matters, she had the maturity of an adult. And think, she didn't even had a family to support her and teach her since her 8th year of life. It was quite good...

Soneky has followed her ouside, at the cold street on the side of the tavern. He was looking at Tzintza carefully. He was taught to react just like her. So many years at the street, so many poeple want to hamr you, even if you have a loaf of bread as the most precious good. He was taught to protect her, as instinct!

OCC: sorry, had nothing else to say... and no time to think...

For several seconds there was complete and utter silence as Tamura faced down this young girl, the two women locking eyes. The youngest of the two had determination, the spark of a challenge and anger  burning in her gaze, Tamura's one eyes was simply showing surprise, but that surprise eventually turned to amusement. The air bender's slightly open mouth slowly turned upwards in an amused smile, and eventually she could contain herself no further and her mirth burst out in a long laughing fit.

Every few seconds she would show signs of calming down, but then she'd see the young girl, with her anger in her eyes, naked steel in hand, and the older mercenary would lose it again.

By the time Tamura managed to get her laughter under control she was holding on to a bamboo barricade for support, gasping for air, and even then her body was racked by barely contained chuckles every few instants.

"Ooooh, you're a funny one. Ill give you that," she managed finally, wiping tears from her eye with a single finger as she regained her breath. "Very funny. Now put that sword away before you hurt yourself," she added. Her tone was, surprisingly, not dismissive at all. It even had the barest hints of respect under layers of good natured mockery. After all it took guts to challenge an older, better armed stranger to a duel, and having guts was definitely respectable in Tamura's book.

"I have to admit kid, you've got more balls than most of the men I know, and I know a lot of men. It'd be a shame to kill you, you seem like an endless source of amusement," she commented, still holding on to the palisade, but seeming more balanced now. "Either we can pretend this never happened, start fresh and trade some nice stories about boys and what wonderful and impressive deeds we've accomplished. Or we could cross steel, and in that scenario I'm afraid the only statistically probable outcome would be your head being separated from those pretty little shoulders of yours, because when I fight it's not a playground game between preschoolers. Its not a match 'to the sit', it's a match to the death.

"Now, please put that weapon away before you get yourself in the kind of trouble you don't walk away from," Tamura's tone had been pleasant, if a bit mocking up to now, but in that last sentence her timber had plummeted to a morbidly serious and cold tone. She wasn't kidding and it was obvious, if pushed Tamura would fight, and if pushed to fight she wouldn't stop until the girl was dead. her single eye, which had been sparkling with amusement and mischief but a second ago was now cold as frozen steel and just as deadly. Someone with that look on their face was not someone you wanted to mess with. It was the look of someone who had killed many times, and who was more than willing to kill many times more just to prove a point.

Jonathon had watched the whole thing unfold from the end of the bar.  He was glad that Tamura had praised him, being compared to a dragon was neat.  He took another long swig of the bottle in his hand, keeping his hood up to hide his identity.  Then the crazy girl showed up.  That sort of ruined his chances of drinking in peace and hearing a good story or two.  He tried to ignore the conflict between Tamura and the girl, but then a knife was thrown and it wound up a bit too close to Jonathon's head for his tastes. As the two left the inn Jonathon ordered another bottle and got up, sling Mystletainn over his shoulder he got up and stepped outside. "Sorry if I am interrupting things ladies." He said, walking to the two of them. "However, I can tell you right now, you're no match for Tamura." He said, looking at the challenger. "Trust me, I know." He said, taking off his hood. "I'm that dragon she was talking about."