Partial credit for this goes to my partner, who came up with much of what I put in here, up to and including Lu Ten's name, profession and how the story evolved.

The titles, both the main one and the chapter titles come from various songs by the Norwegian band Kaizers Orchestra whose musical themes tend to be, very fittingly, about crime, betrayal and revenge.

In spite of this, the theme tune of this - aside from straight-up noir jazz - would be Marlango's 'Shake the Moon'.

"Are you happy with this?"

I glanced at her, the run-down woman who asked such a blasphemous question of me. Her make-up was caked, her hair stringy, a stinking pipe hanging from her perpetually morose lips; she came here for a bit of excitement and the sight of shirtless men, something to distract her from a dull life of booze and blandly watching gauges at whatever factory she'd found a job at. I knew the type. "It's a living," I said and turned away from her.

I escaped the bubble of smoke and depression that surrounded the hastily cobbled-together bar, and the noise of the rest of the room hit me like a freight-train. Cheers, jeers, pleading from the chronic gamblers, sobs from the lost souls, grunts from the three make-shift rings set up around the dingy place.

Unlicensed fighting. Oh, yes, it was good money; better than my uneducated ass could get anywhere else, and certainly better than the licensed rap. Nobody paid to see non-benders fight by the rules when Pro-Bending was going hard and strong uptown. Seeing non-benders beat the unholy snot out of each other, however, with none of the protections rules provided, well, hell, the Triple Threat Triad had jumped into that market the second it scented a business opportunity, and whatever else they were, they weren't stingy. Winning meant good, hard cash; meant food on the table.

My turn was coming up again. I was already going to have an impressive foot-shaped bruise on my hip come morning, and I wasn't much up for adding more, but the night's winning pool was too good to turn down.

"Hey." I ignored it, kept walking. A hand grabbed my elbow hard. "Hey, asshole, I'm talking to you!"

The man was slurring, and when I yanked my arm free, he stumbled. Great. At least it wouldn't take much to knock him out if he got too pushy.

"You Lu Ten, right?" he drawled clumsily. He was wearing too much blue to be anything but a waterbender, but it was too cheap for him to be a Triad.

"Why're you asking questions when you obviously know the answer?" I said, tried to dismiss him, turning to go on my way.

He grabbed my arm again, the shit, and spoke in what he must have considered a discrete voice, "You're goin' up against Wen next," he told me, as if I didn't know. Then he felt the need to add, "S'my buddy! Wen!"

"I'll tell him hello," I said. Another yank on my arm informed me that that wasn't enough for him.

"Hey, fucker!" he tried to growl. It came out burbling. "I said, he's my buddy, you need to fuckin' fall in line!"

Bad idea. Didn't matter how drunk he was, if the Triad heard him trying, however stupidly and clumsily, to fix a fight, he was going to end up bleeding out in a gutter. Like hell was I getting caught up in that. I shoved him and got my arm free, then disappeared into the crowd. I couldn't give half a shit about Wen and his buddies, I had rent to pay.

"Where the fuck were you? Fight's about to start!" my manager - manager; hah. 'Pimp' might come closer, the way he took percentages - snapped, straightening his cuffs like they weren't filthy to begin with. Nervous habit of his, and he scowled when I stared. "Get the hell in the ring, man; don't keep 'em waiting all night."

I grunted, ignored him, ducked under the stained rope. Nonbending brother to an earthbending Triad, Jiro was the born and bred asshole, but he had the connections. I was willing to put up with a lot for that.

And there, across the ring, looking even less savoury because I'd met his asshole friend, was Wen. Yeah, I could pulverise him and walk away feeling good. Like hell was some drunk waterbender going to keep me from moving through this guy to the final fight.

I cracked my knuckles, shook my shoulders loose and kicked my feet. Wen was going down.

They weren't heavy none, just scraps of paper, but I thought I could feel the weight of the yuan-notes in my pocket none the less.

Jiro had taken his cut, yes he had, but there was still more than enough for me to make it through the next couple of weeks if I didn't get extravagant. Enough for the bruises to vanish, and for the scrapes to all but disappear. Still, the last fight of the night had been vicious, and I had an inkling the bandaged scrape over my jaw was going to leave a small scar. Well, hell, add it to the collection.

Wen and his asshole friend were long gone from my mind by the time I made my way home. It was a long, dingy walk in dark streets that would look grimy and wet, even if it hadn't been raining. The Triads, in their eternal pragmatism, saw to it that the underground fights were staged in the south district, in among the factories and warehouses. Less chance of cops, and those that did show their faces tended to be pretty open to a quick bribe. It was a great arrangement for not getting arrested.

It was a shit arrangement for getting home, though.

No trams ran through here this time of night. Why would they? All the workers had gone home or to the bars; anyone here after hours were bound to be illicit. Best case, I hiked my ass to the outskirts of Dragon Flats, caught a late-night tram the seven blocks to my own apartment.

I set to walking briskly, intending to do just that. If I hurried, I could grab a wrap from Ume's before she closed up for the night. One of the better places around my home; for one thing, she tended to keep the grease on the inside of her wraps.

I'd passed two warehouses and was making my way past the endless array of Satomobile factories when I finally noticed that the weird noise was not, in fact, the echo of my own steps. I was being followed. Oh, yes; definitely feeling those yuan-notes now.

I glanced around. No easy chances for a graceful exit. Fuck, there were several people following me too. I was not about to lose my hard-earned cash. There was little enough as it was.

I was sore, I was tired and I was decidedly not in the mood for this, but there wasn't any choice I could see.

I stopped up hard. Behind me the footsteps shuffled on for a few seconds then stopped as well. No whispers, nothing; just anticipation. I turned on my heel and saw a ragtag little gang that I could only guess, going from their brightly coloured and sharply divided clothing, were benders and, sure enough, wobbling slightly and looking mightily pissed off, was Wen's asshole friend.

Shit. I'd have prefered a regular old mugging.

"Can I help you?" I said. By the way they bristled, I probably hadn't sounded as scared as they wanted me to.

"Hey, fucker," said Wen's asshole friend, he of endless wit, "remember me?"

"You're a hard man to forget," I said. "Unfortunately."

It didn't get me a face full of rank water out of Yue Bay, but it did earn me a burst of flame from one of the more sober compatriots. A weak one, and I'd been on the receiving end of enough firebenders to know; I barely had to move back but a few steps to avoid getting singed. Definitely Triad rejects, these.

"That money is ours!" said one of them, possessed by the same astounding wit as his waterbender companion.

"Fuck you," said I, "I won 'em. They're mine."

They were on me in the next heartbeat, flames and rocks and water jetting at me, but I easily ducked and rolled out of the way. Sure, there are benders you don't want to take on; the cops for one thing. Well-trained ones, the ones that know how to use their bending to the best of their advantage.

And then there were these assholes.

One day, one of them sets the curtains on fire or freeze their sister's hand to the wall, and then they glean what they can from harried parents or whichever old bender is hanging around and is willing to at least teach the little fuckers control, and the next minute they think they're fucking Sozin or something.

Well, I'm no bender, but I knew how to fight, and the slowest newbie in the ring still hit faster than than any one of them. Dodging, twisting, it was practically a work-out once I started fighting back.

A fist to the gut stopped the constant rain of small rocks from the mousy earthbender; a roundhouse kick to the face both ended one of the sputtering flames from one firebender, and ended that straight nose he had going for him.

Earthbender out, wheezing against a wall. One firebender down, one more and two waterbenders to go.

I ducked a water-whip and went for the second firebender. She had the oomph the other one lacked, and the way she was throwing her shit around, she was more liable to get me killed.

A clumsy blast of foul-smelling water from Wen's asshole friend hit me in the chest and knocked me back, throwing me off balance for long enough for them to start pushing me back, and I only realised they'd herded me into an alley when my already dark surroundings grew darker.

Well, shit.

Right, I'd recovered from worse in the ring, and they still relied far too much on bending, and not enough on speed.

Dodging another burst of flames, I went after her again only to find myself blocked by more water-whips. The waterbender, the sober one, was doing his level best to keep me on the defensive, and that shit smarted more than water had any right to.

Fine, he could go first then. I turned to face him, falling back to find the best way around those soaring lashes of water.

Stupid.

Fucking.

Move.

I realised what I'd walked into when I saw blue light gathering out of the corner of my eye. I should have kept on the firebender, kept her in motion, kept her occupied, but how often do you really meet lightningbenders outside of the Triad or the Agni Kais?

I spun on my heel just in time to take a bolt of lightning to the face.

The world disappeared in bright light and thunder, and my body froze in a tense arch, bolted to the ground as if someone had set a nail gun to my foot. I may have screamed. I'm not sure.

A second later - an endless, yawning, eternal second - the light and the pain stopped, and I collapsed on the ground limply. Their voices, coming from far off, were triumphant, the absolute fuckers. They gathered around me, the mousy earthbender limping into the alley, trailed by a liquid shape that shouldn't be there.

The last thing I saw before my vision blacked out was a white, inhuman face peering out from the shadows, looming behind the five.

The last thing I heard, a split-second later, was a pained gasp and a fearful cry. Then there was only soothing darkness.