Skeleton Women

Chapter One: Escape

"Take me with you," Ty Lee insisted, her eyes alight with this passion that made his lip twist as he was unsure if he should laugh or not.

The cute little thing was carrying two bulky suitcases, clearly sporadically packed. Some bits of clothing were sticking out of the clasped shut sides. Her wide, innocent eyes were glittering in the morning light shining through the window of the tavern.

In front of her was a muscular male visitor from Caldera City, something that Ty Lee's town had not seen in a very long time. He was nothing more than a merchant, but the quaint stop on his road home treated him like a celebrity. How modern he looked, how his hair was cut and what his clothes looked like.

He had to admit he liked it. He had to admit he liked this girl, but she was a one night stand that would weigh him down.

It was not out of disdain that he thought her proposition was ridiculous; she reminded him a bit of himself before he made his way to Caldera at last. But she also had no idea what she was getting into, and that the fact of the matter was that she would wind up a prostitute or servant of a rich family, and not the star she dreamt of being.

"You're talented. I'm not just saying that," he admitted, his voice deep and gravelly. "You know how to perform, I'm pretty sure you might not have bones or a sense of fear, and your voice is pretty. But that isn't enough. You have to have the connections and the gold pieces."

Ty Lee was not deterred for a fraction of a second. She knew what she wanted from her life, and she knew that she could get it.

"I'm more than talented. I am ambitious and I am optimistic and I refuse to get knocked down," she said loudly, the suitcases trembling in her hands.

"Ambition is a dangerous thing, especially in Caldera." He hesitated then. Because no girlfriend had ever looked at him like that, much less a girl he one nighted. It made him feel the need to encourage her, against better judgment. "Confidence, on the other hand..."

Or maybe it was stubbornness. He could not quite tell, but he sighed all the same.

"Take me with you. You don't have any responsibility for me! I just need a ride is all!" Ty Lee shouted, this time dropping one of the suitcases. His hand rushed out a caught it.

He sighed again.

"Alright, alright. I'm not invested enough in this to try to force you to stay here." He shrugged and Ty Lee cheered, grinning. Like the child she clearly still was.

And that was the beginning of Ty Lee's real life.

She had not been living for a whole fourteen years, despite being alive. Ty Lee was not the kind of person to live in this small little village forever, working at a stupid bar and inn with only her family to know and a few boring neighbors to meet.

Ty Lee had seen the whole world that her parents and sisters wanted, and it bored her instead of making her cozy. She wanted to take risks. She was the girl who climbed the tallest building in town and then did a handstand atop of it just to find something fun to do. She was the girl who everybody talked about as if she wasn't something real.

But in Caldera, she knew, everybody was like that. The entire city was an amazing paradise that she thought about insistently.

It could not have been a better day.

Ty Lee could not have been more thrilled about arriving in the city.

She did not know which way to look or what to say or even how to breathe. Yes, she had definitely forgotten how to breathe the moment she leapt from the carriage without a word of thank you and immediately began to explore.

It was such an incredible place, with unbelievable sights. The people were dressed in fashions Ty Lee did not know existed, and she suddenly felt so foolish for her faded pink clothes. They definitely exposed her as someone from the country.

Everyone was in their own worlds, walking by without a single care. And Ty Lee never wanted to be one of them more.

She walked to the sidewalk, dropping her suitcases twice, and suddenly realized that she had nowhere to stay. And then realized that she did not care for a second that she had nowhere to stay.

The more important question was where to look first, where to go first. She could smell the bread baking at a cute teashop, and she could feel the smoke drifting from the streets, and she could hear the infinite street performers, and could see her entire future lying in front of her.

Ty Lee softly exhaled and started walking.

It was afternoon at a burlesque club called Simmer and a teenage boy was begging a teenage girl to stay.

"You can't leave me hanging like this," the Earth Kingdom immigrant pleaded, but it was of no use.

"I am leaving. And I'm leaving right now!" snapped the waitress, another import straight from the lower ring of Ba Sing Se. "This is the absolute last I'm taking! It's not like anyone important is trying to keep me here!"

Haru frowned. "I know I'm just a serving boy, but I also know that we just lost two other waitresses and the boss isn't bothering to replace them."

"Of course, because we haven't been paid in exactly how long?" And before her friend could argue, she was on her way, stomping down the crowded and hot streets of Caldera City.

He sighed, forlorn. It really sucked to be a teenage runaway in a foreign country.

If he could quit, he would too.

Seven days passed as Ty Lee found a small inn to stay in, and just hoped that she could scrounge up the cash to pay the bill. The bad thing about running away and deciding to start from scratch with only a collection of birthday money was that she had nothing lined up and waiting.

She had once known a girl in her village who managed to move to Caldera. But that girl had a job as a maid settled, a place to live and family members already working in one of the factories near the city. Ty Lee had none of that, and her extensive family had no idea where she was.

The only thing to do was audition and show off. For a while she joined up with the street performers and it got her lots of silver pieces for food.

Every audition failed. And Ty Lee had no idea where she was going to, but she was excited and enticed by the bright lights of Caldera. Nothing stopped her for a second.

The thousandth bar she wandered into was the most dazzling of them all. She was still gawking at it as she sat down at the bar and tried to look like she belonged.

It was so beautiful. The smoke felt like mist entering a fabled land, and the walls kind of sparkled. All of the patrons were clearly important, the women beautiful, then men sitting straight and strong. Beautiful music, insanely, intensely beautiful women on the glass and metal stage.

"What, uh, is this place?" Ty Lee asked as she looked at the performers on the stage. Now, Ty Lee had sung, danced, contorted separately, but this was such a blend. The lights reminded her of the first type of circus Ty Lee saw as a child on Ember Island. Just dazzling.

The bartender glanced over at her. He looked like a teenager, and, admittedly, none of the half naked dancers looked over twenty either. Perhaps this was promising, or maybe it should have served as a warning that it was not the kind of place you could work in your whole life.

A stable job would have older people too.

"It's not the place a little girl should be in," he said as he strode over to her.

"I'm not a little girl," Ty Lee insisted, but her voice elevated in pitch just to spite her. "You can't be more than sixteen, anyway."

He smiled and laughed. "I'm Haru and it's pretty nice to meet you."

"Who's in charge here?" Ty Lee asked loudly. "I want to work here."

That made Haru look pretty concerned. But Ty Lee was determined as she heard the music swell and then saw exactly why she was too young and innocent looking to be in here. It was... sexual. Ty Lee felt something stir inside of her that she had not felt before. A growing heat within, a desire that she thought she was not supposed to feel.

Not for women, at least.

"The boss is upstairs, but I think I might be fired in an instant if I let some kid walk in there," Haru said and she bristled again at being called kid by another kid.

Ty Lee opened her mouth to argue more, but he was called away in a slight panic.

It was then that Ty Lee realized just how understaffed they were.

It was then that she had a marvelous idea.

"I," Ty Lee said, standing up, "I used to work at an inn and restaurant. Let me help out, okay?"

Haru knew he should argue with that, but he couldn't.

He gestured for her to come help.

As the night wore on, Ty Lee was sweating, but having a quite easy time with the job. Not to mention racking up tips the likes of which she had never seen.

Sure, it wasn't the glamour she went searching for here. But it was something stable, and she got to watch the incredibly beautiful dancers while she waited on very important looking people. It was the best night of her life so far.

"Who's that?" asked another adolescent. Ty Lee turned to see a pale, very Fire Nation girl who was never on the stage. "I've never seen her."

She was intonation-less, and therefore didn't have the funny Caldera accent. Her eyes, Ty Lee realized with a shudder of panicked, were focused on the unofficial waitress.

"I'm Ty Lee," she said swiftly, walking over.

"I wasn't talking to you," said the girl, looking at Ty Lee as if she were some kind of gross bug.

But Ty Lee had gotten rather used to that as a transient here. And she refused to get knocked down.

"That's the boss's daughter," Haru said quietly.

"Who has been stuck here all night." She was clearly displeased about that. "There is no fathoming the depths of my hatred for this place. Can't pick me up, she says. Very busy she says..."

Ty Lee had no clue who she was, and she somewhat thought that the boss's daughter was under the impression that Ty Lee and Haru could not hear her. Or at least not question her muttering to herself.

And Ty Lee says, "I'm just helping. Clean and all."

Mai looked to Haru. "Where's an adult?"

Haru shrugged. "A lot of people have been quitting lately..."

And Mai said, "Right. Speaking of quitting, she looks gullible and pathetic. Kind of cute, actually, if you like cute things."

She also can hear you, Ty Lee wanted to interrupt, but she just grinned.

"I am very gullible and pathetic," Ty Lee said brightly, batting her eyelashes. "And desperate too."

"You're just my girlfriend's type." Mai sighed. "Want to go meet my dad? He's holding me hostage while he interviews stupid waitresses."

"Okay!" Ty Lee followed Mai as if she were leading her to the palace and not an office in a gross sex club.

The upstairs was fixating to Ty Lee. There were such gorgeous paintings of past girls and women who got their start here. Famous ones; ones that Ty Lee had heard of.

She was nearly tripped by a girl leaving, rolling her eyes. Ty Lee knew that face; it was the face of someone who failed an audition. Concerned, Ty Lee just kept following and eventually was face to face with an overly dignified looking man.

"Dad, this is a girl who just decided to clean and serve everyone tonight for some reason." Mai jabbed her thumb lazily in Ty Lee's direction. "I think you should hire her."

Ty Lee looked at him with the wide, glittery eyes of a kitten begging for treats.

And all of that, he noted, for an expendable and useless job in his eyes.

"That is the kind of drive I'm looking for," he said and Mai was relieved.

"Can we leave now?" she asked and he ignored her.

"One question, how much do you expect to be paid?" he inquired and Mai rolled her eyes.

Because her father was obscenely wealthy, and he paid the dancers a quarter of what they deserved, and was pretty certain that poorer people just liked working for free. Everyone, including his daughter, was pretty certain that it was his miserly ways that lost him so many waitresses.

"Umm, I have this inn bill, you know, and really I just kind of, hm... I don't really know how much I'm actually worth." Ty Lee had never been paid, working for her family. She just knew what she needed to stay afloat in the city.

He looked exalted. "I can easily pay that off. When can you start?"