Who: Azula and Khamul What: Azula checks up on criminal operations When: 2/1 Where: A rooftop Status: Complete Rating: PG-13
Azula stood on the roof, looking down at the city far below. The lights glittered, and the night air was cool and crisp, but she wasn’t cold, despite the vapor that appeared whenever she breathed. She allowed herself a few minutes to close her eyes, and breath, and let her mask fall off.
There was a stir of air behind her, and a voice that spoke in her ear like shadows and dark things. “Still no hairs out of place? I remember what you looked like when your hair was wild, and were begging for release.”
She turned, peering up at Khamul, responding cooly, and with a mocking lilt to her voice. “If memories serves, you were the one that was begging.”
The man smirked, stepping back. “You don’t need to hold anything over my head, girl.”
“Don’t I? If my father knew...”
Khamul folded his arms, the temperature around him dropping noticeably. “He doesn’t, and I know you won’t tell him. Now what do you want?”
Laughing, Azula leaned back against the guard rail. Azure fire sprouted around her, and she waved a hand lazily. “Just a status report. Revenue isn’t where it should be.”
“I had to shut down a few operations. I thought that it wasn’t good for your father’s reputation to be peddling in underage girls.”
The fire around her flared. Azula was reminded too much of what had happened to Mai her friend. Before all that, she wouldn’t have really given any fucks. At least openly. “Acceptable loss, but we need to fill the void with another source.”
Khamul rubbed his thumb on his chin. “Could expand the drugs. Maybe get more into enforcement.”
“Why do you think I’m here? Just to be pretty?” Azula made fire dance around the two of them.
The wraith narrowed his eyes, not happy to have his position or authority superceded, and by a seventeen year old girl, no less. He snuffed the flames out with icey shadow, and grinned at her. “That the best you got?”
Azula had no desire to play Khamul’s game. “You report to me, do you understand?”
“Whatever.” The air around them warmed as he retracted his aura, flashing white teeth at her. “Do you want me to genuflect too, princess?”
Rolling her eyes and brushing past him, Azula replied with a rising lilt to her voice, “Just do your job, Khamul, and we’ll leave your little ginger alone.”
Moving with the shadows, he pinned Azula to the wall. Their faces were inches apart. “Hurt her or her family and I will teach you a new definition of pain, Azula.”
The princess smirked, and casually pushed him away from her. “I think we have an understanding.”
He glared daggers at her back as she left. He thought, perhaps, that at some point in the near future, there might be a dance of shadow and flame.