Of Ramen and Roses

Kicked out? Kicked out?! Lin couldn't believe the nerve of them! A friendly inquiry from Saikhan about lunch turned into them forcing her to leave the office to take a lunch break every day from now on or at least bring her own lunch instead. She had no need for lunch nor did she ever really have the time for it with paperwork, calls, cleaning up after inept officers, surveillance, and chasing groups of snot nose baggy pant upstarts who thought they were the 'next great triad' around Republic City. She ate a few slices of toast, or half of a muffin or bagel for breakfast then she would eat a full dinner at whatever time she got home (if she got home that night). It was hard getting used to eating a meal she had neglected for such a long time. Saikhan's jibe That adding a high carbed meal would give her extra energy to chase after shoplifters was not taken well, she was not liking the idea of high carbs if she was being forced to sit at her desk all day. Lin Beifong was in no way starving herself, her body was just programmed for that type of eating schedule and she would simply grab a small snack if she ever got hungry before dinner. She could think of a dozen things that she could be spending time doing rather than eating in a public square. If being behind her schedule by a whole hour wasn't bad enough nearly everyone in the square would stare at her while she ate. 'oh good gravy! The chief of police eating?! Chopsticks?! Is such a thing possible?!' you would think they thought officers survived off of coffee alone. She certainly had the money to eat take away every day but she did not have the time to make her own lunch meaning what she ate wasn't as healthy as she would have liked it to be. After almost a week of getting stared at like a zoo animal Lin spent her next lunch break searching for a good place to eat which she found in a secluded small garden like area behind some buildings that no one seemed to know about. It was silent and had trees and a broken down rock wall covering only the right side of the area. The place reminded her of long ago ruins that were once a great city but was now merely rocks that had grass growing around them. It was rather lovely and at least now she could eat her lunch in peace. She came to 'her spot' for a few days after discovery before anything happened.

The woman had to admit she was pleased with that new food stand that seemed to pop up over night deciding she would definitely stop by there again if the Ramen and dumplings she ordered tasted as good as they smelled. As always she sat down on the weather worn stone bench unwrapping her food and proceeding to eat her noodles and take a bite of the warm dumpling. Rustling in a bush not far from her seat caught her off guard making her stand up suddenly taking a fighting stance. No one that was up to anything good snuck around in a secluded place like this. "I know you're there, come out now." she ordered. The bushes rustled again before a small dirty boy with the wide eyed look of a trapped pigmy-mouse came out of the hiding place. The miserable runt had dirty bare feet and chin length messy brown hair covering his cheeks which looked like the had been sloppily washed and wore a too big shirt and small shorts. Her gruffness at having her meal interrupted vanished and was replaced with pity. Most children either thought she was the coolest toughest bender ever or were scared to death of her, this one seemed to be the latter and she didn't handle scared children very well (she wasn't exactly a nurturing motherly type). "Come on over kid, I'm not going to eat you." she said mentally kicking herself when she saw him shrink away more, she noticed he was giving her abandoned food longing glances every few seconds and giving her nervous ones as if scared she would scold him for looking at her meal.

The chief let out a sigh returning to sit on the bench looking down at her meal, she really liked the dumplings but this kid looked like he hadn't seen edible food since he was born. Lin unwrapped the dough covered meat and held it out towards him from where she sat. The kid took a step back towards the bushes looking from side to side to see if they were being watched before he pointed to himself as if asking if she was giving that to him. Lin sighed waving it in his direction. "Do you want it or not kid?" despite her trying to ease the child's fear of approaching her, her voice seemed to still have a small note of impatience to it. She took a tiny bite of it before holding it out to him again. Perhaps he thought it was poisoned. With all the nervous uncertainty of the pigmy-mouse he so greatly resembled in his disheveled state he inched his way towards her snatching it from her hand and quickly running just out of arms reach before he plopped cross-legged on the ground and ate the offering while not taking his eyes off her. She should get him to an orphanage where he could be fed and given a warm bed to sleep in but from what she had seen so far she knew she would have a devil of a time trying to catch him.

Once the boy had devoured his portion she held out the takeaway container of barely eaten Ramen for him which he moved to take with a bit less caution and returned back to his out of arms reach spot throwing aside the chopsticks and scooping the noodles out with his hands bringing it to his mouth as if it would suddenly vanish on him. It didn't take long before he ate the whole thing and was currently trying to lick the container before she called him over and patted the bench beside her holding out her last meal portion (another quarter eaten dumpling) as if to offer it as a reward. "Come on kid, come sit here." she said quietly hoping her talking softly took out the edge that always came out when she spoke. At this the boy walked over and sat down by her clenching and unclenching his hands until she gave it to him. She had been surprised to see he had shoved it into his pocket rather than eating it greedily like he had the rest of her meal. "Not hungry?"

"I'm bad." he said somewhat sadly. "Mako would have liked the hot food but I ate it all and forgot. Mako always gets us food, he is getting food now but I was hungry and it smelled good over here. I am saving this for him but I ate more than him." the child sniffed wiping tears from his eyes.

"Is Mako your friend?"

"Mako is my big brother, he is a firebender and is always looking out for me, I wish I was good at snatching like him so I could give him food."

Snatching? It was always a shame to see street kids roughing it alone. The officers would try to get any homeless children to orphanages but most of them would slip away having been incorrectly taught that cops meant bad things would happen to them. Grant it not all the orphanages were good but they were still better than sleeping in a gutter. She wasn't sure how to respond to him, she had never been good with kids mainly because they annoyed the hell out of her but she wanted to help him, and not just because he had a face so cute even she wanted to pinch his cheeks. She could give them a few yuan but she had a feeling it might not be spent on food and she didn't want anyone thinking they could bully a couple of kids because they had a few coins.

"Are you a bad guy?" he asked softly. "Mako says that people who wear armor are bad guys."

"Well that is a stu-silly thing to think. Sokka wore armor, Sokka was Avatar Aang's friend and he helped stop the fire lord from destroying everything."

"Isn't the fire lord good?" the boy frowned.

"Fire Lord Zuko is good, but his father was a very evil man." ah history. Nature's slap on the back of the head for the stupid actions of men.

"You're pretty and nice, nice pretty girls are good so you must be good then."

Pretty? Glasses would be the next priority after he was clean, clothed, fed, and sheltered. "You must not have seen many women runt." the chief snorted.

"I have. They are stupid heads, they think me and Mako are smelly and they don't give food. Did you wrestle a moose lion? Did you get those scars from wrestling a moose lion?!" he asked starting to sound like a normal child his age with their eager energy and strange questions. "You wrestled a moose lion." the boy nodded sagely having come up with an answer for himself. "I can't wrestle a moose lion. Mako always does the wrestling and he can throw fire balls, I can only play with rocks."

An earthbender and a firebender as brothers? An odd mix but then again Tenzin and Kya were related. "I can take you somewhere you can eat more food and have a nice bed, would you like to go there? Your brother can come too." she added the last part quickly. With a cute face like that he would be adopted quickly, but then she wasn't sure if his firebender brother would be wanted as well and this kid wasn't going anywhere without his brother from the sound of it.

"Mako says that he can take care of us both and if we go to the warm bed place they won't let us stay together." he went on to lick his fingers when he saw there was a little sauce left on them proceeding to lick each one just in case. "Will you come back? I saw you but you were wearing armor and Mako says cops wear armor and cops take you away. I was hungry though."

"I can come back if you want." Lin answered not sure if her presence here would cause problems for the boys who seemed to have made this their base of operation.

He looked rather embarrassed then and proceeded to scratch his head nervously. "Mako says that I shouldn't talk to strangers. Can you tell me your name so you won't be a stranger? I'm Bolin."

"Lin." she answered matter of factly.

This caused the boy to laugh. "It's Lin like Bolin!" he said between giggles. Once he settled down he got up and got on all fours looking under the bench for a moment before he started digging in the dirt until his hands were covered with it and brought a fist sized rock out of the hole and wiping it on his shirt until most of the hard dirt covering it was gone and laid it on the bench by her hip.

She watched as he knelt down beside it close enough that he was pressed against her leg and held out his hands so they were on either side of the still dirty rock but not touching it. She hadn't realized at first until she saw how focused he was on the rock and the beads of sweat coming down his brow that he was trying to earthbend. The boy pulled away panting for breath a few times before he returned to his task making the chief worry that he would burst a vessel or strain something when he started growling and shaking his hands. The thick, round, oval shaped rock started breaking apart until what was left had taken the shape of what she guessed was a flower having only seen a few kid drawings. But she decided it was a flower when Bolin put it in her hand and gave her a salute. Before she could say anything else he was gone in the blink of an eye. He was a quick one. She had been unable to find him amongst the throng of people and after almost twenty minuets with no luck she returned to work late in a rather sour mood having not been able to catch him.

The silly rock flower had become a paper weight as she was unable to get his goofy smile out of her head until the following day when she returned to 'the spot' (she couldn't think of it as hers anymore since it seemed that others had found it first) with two meals instead of one. The older woman was a bit disappointed when he did not show up that time and was about to leave thinking he had realized she was a cop and run off when she noticed another rock flower that looked exactly like the first one in the grass by where he had sat before he joined her on the bench. She would never understand children. Lin decided to leave the second meal on the bench and head back to work pretending to not see a small head peeking out from behind a tree a ways away which gave the spy a perfect front view of the bench she had been sitting at and eating her lunch. This must have been the brother since this one had dark black hair instead of brown. This happened for three more days, she would return to find the meal she left gone, a rock flower in the same place, and a glimpse of the Mako boy thinking she couldn't see him watching her. It might have been silly clutter but Lin had kept all the rock flowers which were looking a little better each time since the boy must have been practicing, as the days passed she now had six more rock flowers arranged on the mantle in her sitting room. On the seventh day she came back to her spot to find Mako sitting in the spot on the ground with the rock flower sitting in front of him.

"Hello Mako." she greeted noting the boy's surprise that she knew who he was. "Where is Bolin?"

"He isn't here. I'm bringing food to him." he proceeded to watch her like a hawk as he took the second bag from her and sorted through its contents casting suspicious glances her way before selecting a single dumpling and closing the bag again pushing it to the side. Mako looked taller and paler than his brother and was wearing a red scarf.

"Tell him thank you for the flowers." she said as she ate an eggroll she had gotten herself.

"He says you're welcome." Mako answered crossing his arms before taking a bite of the food in his hand. "You gona take my brother away? You're a cop." he said accusingly while glaring at her. "You're waiting for him to come back so you can take him."

It took all her power not to groan and roll her eyes, clearly this was the dramatic brother."Listen, I am just coming here to eat lunch, I'm not going to take your brother. I could take you guys to an orphanage if you want but other than that there isn't much I can do unless you decide to break the law in which case I will take you and give you three meals a day and a thin bed in a jail cell. Either way you are getting a bed though I don't think you would like the people in jail very much." This seemed to bring the boy up smart. She held out her hand bending her fingers which made the boy stand up and give her the rock flower. "He has been practicing."

"Bolin is going to be a great earthbender." Mako nodded before picking up the bag he left in the dirt and carrying it off.

Triads were the next trend as far as crime went and the chief found it hard to get lunch breaks regardless of how much her men wanted her to eat and started leaving food on the bench before she came to work. Rock flowers now covered quite a few surfaces of her house and she saw Bolin or Mako several times before she returned one day not finding a flower on the bench and the food she left untouched. Again she had to break routine, rather than having to deal with being forced to have lunch she had to stop herself several times from ordering two meals instead of one. Once in awhile she wondered where they had gone but since there had been no dead bodies found and no one in the triads she took down bore any resemblance to the two she assumed they just went elsewhere.

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Ten years later…

Although most of the time she enjoyed her job, things like paperwork and idiots made her question why she bothered. Of all the idiotic things she as chief of police was forced to do, following celebrities was by far the worst. Oh, ordinary officers who were usually paid to do this were not present, they were not good enough for this guy, and of course because he was friends with some higher up it was just her, Saikhan, and a few other of her trusted seasoned officers standing around an idiot who thought money made him special as he sauntered up the stairs into the high stands of the probending games. She couldn't imagine what stupid things she would have to do if the Avatar was as stuck up and cocky as this moron and decided to come anywhere near the city. After this joker she wasn't going to be doing anything like this again, they can hang her up by her toes all they want. She was brought out of her thoughts by loud cheering making her cross her arms and lean against the wall beside the man who smelled like he had taken a bath in cheap chalogne. She was no Tenzin, she wouldn't be keeping anyone who wanted to go from going by saying it was a barbaric sport, but she had to admit that probending today was a waste of time. She went to Earth Rumble matches all the time with her mother (and sometimes participated in them) when she was young-THOSE had been good. Probending had been interesting when it first started, having earth rumblers, firebenders, and water tribe duelists trying to knock each other out had been a good sport. Today however it had too many rules for her to know what was going on half the time and there was no longer any creativity in the matches. It came down to rock disks, water whips, and fire balls- duck or get wet. The sport lost all appeal and the only thing that broke the routine was those moronic teams that were so poorly skilled they needed to play dirty to win.

Saikhan (currently her favorite right now because of it) had switched places with her so she could move further away from the pompous singer want to be and sneak off to take the position of the furthest officer from him. Fire Ferrets verses the Gopher Bears, still in round one and she already had a headache. She wouldn't trust either team enough to bet money on but the Fire Ferrets seemed like the more rounded team- the Gopher Bears favored their firebender to do their attacking for them.

Training with her mother had given her lightening fast reflexes which let her dodge a stray earth disk from the ring that somehow had been launched at the very top of the stands with a flick of her arm making it embed itself halfway into the wall a few feet away from her head. Seeing its landing made her realize regardless of whether or not she had done anything it would have missed her by a good distance. Saikhan and a another officer came rushing over but stopped short when she waved them off claiming lousy aim was another reason she hated the sport. She had not expected chuckles from this or the fact that Saikhan wolf whistled at her (luckily not loud enough to draw attention to them) This caught her attention and she saw her second in command wag a brow suggestively at her jerking his head towards the disk in the wall. Lin approached it to see something was attached to it in such a way that she was able to remove it without damaging it at all. The woman looked in surprise when she held a single long stemmed rose in full bloom in her hand that was so expertly shaped that if it wasn't made out of rock one might think it was the real thing. Her fingers moved to trace the detailed rock leaves before approaching the railing and looking down from her spot at the very top of the stands to the stage to see the earthbender from the Fire Ferrets turn towards her standing at attention giving her a crooked smile and a salute before quickly dodging an attack from the Gopher Bear's waterbender and using a disk to knock him out of the ring. She might get mercilessly teased that she had an admirer or questions if she was into younger men (by the younger men at the station) but she couldn't help giving him a smile in return.

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