Equally Unkillable

Career placement tests had never struck him as infallible fountains of wisdom. For one thing, they were incredibly rigid in what they considered legitimate employment opportunities. Second, a number of them seemed inordinately fascinated in setting him up with work he enjoyed. A job was a job. What made it worth coming back to were the benefits.

Early retirement options, paid sick leave, negotiable hours, meal plans, housing, vision, and coverage for alternatives like chiropractic and physical therapy were what would get his loyalty. Regardless of the fact that he'd checked off everything on his list of desirables, and gotten the guarantee of holiday overtime pay, he still reserved the right of every individual drawing a paycheck for services rendered; complaining.

"4 am drills this morning," he monotoned.

"A good way to begin the day." His cousin, who had joined an allegedly noble insurgent group, would train at combat at all hours of the day without any prompting.

"I got overtime pay."

"I'm achieving social revolution and equality." His cousin valued ideals over health insurance.

"I habitually assist in toppling authority figures."

"How many of them actually deserved it?"

"They didn't do enough to prevent it. Check please."

His cousin, who hadn't bothered to negotiate a salary, didn't have enough change to cover half the cost of their meal. His cousin offered to stay and wash dishes to compensate, but haggling over the mercenary contract had ensured that he had enough to pay for them both.

The good thing about having a close-cropped, functional haircut was that it could be ruffled to relative dryness in a matter of moments. The bad thing about military fatigues, at least Soviet grade ones, was that they got dreadfully waterlogged.

"How far were you from the shore?" His cousin's voice crackled over the radio.

"A bit over eight hundred meters."

"Any current?"

"None to speak of." Getting back to shore hadn't been a problem, maintaining consciousness after hitting the water had been. Failing to dwell on that meant his cousin felt free to go over the crusade for justice.

"The Avatar has arrived in Republic City. Things are very decisively in motion."

"Isn't the Avatar on the side of equality and individual rights?" Before speaking with his cousin, he had managed to contact Amalgam headquarters. It was unclear whether the helicopter would be coming back for him or if he would need to go underground and make it out of the country on his own.

"Avatar Kyoshi established the Dai Li, Avatar Roku failed to prevent the Fire Nation invasion, and Avatar Kuruk was obsessed with personal goals. However, it remains to be seen whether the current Avatar may benefit the cause."

"So," he ducked behind a dilapidated wall as a few people ran past. The locals would be livid over his group's involvement in the war, and the other side would be outraged that Amalgam's weapons hadn't been enough to defeat Mithril. "There's a fair chance the new Avatar will see things from your perspective."

"That's extremely unlikely. Amon is quite convincing, though, and the enlightenment will take place whether the Avatar wants it to or not."

The ground shook as an Arm Slave patrolled in thunderous clangs. "Did you still want those AS schematics?"

"For the mechs? Yes."

"I'll probably only be able to get you the Savage models."

"The engineering is going to be reworked anyway. Having someone with a thorough knowledge of the machines would be highly valued."

"Did you get a paycheck for last week?"

"I'm a volunteer with fringe benefits and unassailable moral highground. And Amon doesn't express his enthusiasm for ideas by kicking the nearest body out the door of an in flight helicopter."

"Gates signs every payroll promptly by Friday. I'll keep what I've got."

He was worried. Performance reviews were coming up soon, and he still hadn't confidently nailed down whether getting kicked out of the helicopter had been based on something objective and external, or something completely arbitrary. A negative, or even neutral, review could result in a docking of pay or reduction of vacation time. He was in the mood for a stiff drink.

Fortunately, or otherwise, after scrounging through various couch cushions his cousin had come up with enough change to treat them both to a night out. Unfortunately, or otherwise, his cousin considered caffeinated tea after midday to be wild living.

"Then they all took off down the alleyway," his cousin said over the rim of his oolong and ginger. "Capturing them wouldn't have been too hard, but Amon thought it would be better if they spread the word."

"It seems the Avatar isn't looking kindly on your organization then."

"No, but she's also impulsive and young, and the people will soon realize that her regurgitated notions about the future pale next to the truth of Amon's vision. She's also not unbeatable. I didn't get away from that particular episode unbruised, but she has exploitable blind spots, physical and psychological."

"That's something to take advantage of."

"We already have. She was completely at our mercy at an encounter at Avatar Aang's memorial. Amon unmistakably demonstrated the superiority of our cause."

"...But he didn't do that unbending thing he does? Or kill her?"

"Of course not. If she was dead who would communicate what we had done?"

"Someone would've found her body." Gates had wiped out the majority of a civil army, after getting paid by them, when said army had criticized his methods.

"We're not going to win simply through superior skill and strength, but through psychological and moral supremacy. How's your work?"

"Gates assigned me as his driver today, and it wasn't a safe situation." They had been under fire half the time they'd been on the road and Gates had blown apart a barricade with a bazooka. "It shows some level of trust."

"No word on your performance review?"

He gulped down the last of his jasmine and didn't answer.

For some obscure reason, his cousin had decided that mailing a swimsuit to him would make him feel better. If he had been in the tropics, that might have been the case. As it was, he was just shy of the Arctic Circle and wearing an enormous coat whenever he went outdoors. It didn't follow that he wasn't annoyed when Gates stole the bathing suit to try out the unheated, five degree centigrade pool.

Perhaps that was the reason he felt compelled to bluntly spell out the failure of the Italian counteroffensive and the capture of one of their operatives. Of course, being thousands of kilometers from the scene of that situation meant that Gates took everything out on the messenger. He was dragged into freezing water, pummeled into unconsciousness, and left in the pool.

That was what he'd been able to piece together after he woke up. There was a possibility that he would have rolled onto his back and achieved consciousness without drowning, but things hadn't been allowed to play out in that direction. A courier, whose paycheck depended on delivering the message to the specified recipient, had fished him out of the pool and slapped him awake before handing him a letter.

Fought with the Avatar and the metal bending chief of police.

Got kicked off the top of the Pro-Bending Dome.

Back hurts.

How's your review?

The courier handed him a second letter. It was to the point, but Gates had given him a surprisingly positive assessment. He could add it to his resume. It would also be enough to expand his chiropractic coverage to extended family members.

They had been planning on trying out a new restaurant that week. At the last minute, he'd received a telegram from his cousin. The Avatar had been kidnapped and his cousin's group had made an attempt to hijack it. After getting bloodbended by an apparently corrupt official and knocked aside by a possum playing Avatar, the Avatar had escaped and Amon sounded displeased. His cousin had taken it hard, and expounded in that vein for several sentences. It was extremely wordy for a telegram, and he wondered at it until he saw that his cousin had reverse charged it to the recipient.

Gates had been in an amiable mood, and was finding entertainment by balancing an apple on top of a knife. What put Gates in an even better mood was tossing the apple across the room and shooting it off of his head. All things considered, he had been closer to death more often when he was in the proximity of his superior than when he was in the proximity of his enemies. Which meant he was almost constantly risking his life. Which meant he could probably get Amalgam to increase his hourly rate.

He sent his cousin a one sentence reply.

Suck it up.

He was doing something in the background while Leonard Testarossa, or whatever pretentious pseudonym he was currently parading under, had a corpse dropped off for Gates. Some of Amalgam's agents had gone rogue and an operation was being enacted to take them down. Since there were civilians in the crossfire, Mithril was also interfering and making themselves targets as well.

There had a been a hurried radio call from his cousin, outlining the triumph of the latest events in Republic City. The police force had been demolished and the Equalists were officially in charge. One of the key skirmishes had taken place on Air Temple Island where the lion's share of the White Lotus had been defeated.

Towards the end of that incident, two pro-bending champions, a non-bender who consistently outfought the Equalist forces, the Avatar, and a polar bear dog, the slaying of which had been considered one the highest challenges in Water Tribe culture up until twenty years ago, were making a run for it. Naturally, his cousin tried to stop them single-handedly.

His cousin had survived, obviously, but scheduling another chiropractic appointment seemed to be in order.

In between various giddy notes from his cousin considering the rise of equal treatment, he was busy tracking a slew of wireless communication in Hong Kong as Amalgam successfully dispatched the remaining deserter and took a stab at taking out some of the prime Mithril operatives in the area. It was going quite well and Gates was in high form.

Then, in a span of a few minutes, that one Mithril agent who had managed to operate the Lambda Driver showed up. A conflict that had been going on for days was wrapped up in less than five minutes as the Armed Slaves and the operators were obliterated. Including Gates.

Unemployed was not a word he liked to use to describe himself. Laying low in the smoldering streets wasn't too much of a challenge, and he was able to make it to an outbound ship quite easily. Since his cousin's forces had come into power, working for the Equalists might now come with more tangible benefits than moral superiority.

At their next meeting, he had three different versions of his resume and was ready to listen seriously to just how great working for Amon was and consider it as one of his options. When his cousin finally arrived, forty-five minutes late, the depression was palpable.

"Did Chief Bei Fong escape?" he wondered.

"Worse," his cousin moaned and crashed face first into the table. "Amon is a bender."

By the time dessert came around, Amon's fall from grace had been thoroughly revealed. The man was a waterbender who had been using bloodbending to inhibit the bending of others. It had been an effective ruse, but his cousin was very hung up on things like honesty, and a lying Amon was apparently an unworthy figurehead for civil insurrection. His cousin and Amon had experienced a bit of a falling out after his cousin tried to attack and Amon took part in some bloodbending bludgeoning.

The last time his cousin had suffered from crushed ideals, recovery had taken seven and a half months. If Amon had been available to beat up it might have hastened the process, but his cousin had been unable to locate him. As it was it looked like he'd be putting up his cousin for the next several months. Being ready for sudden termination was part of his mode of operation, however, and he had managed to persuade Gates to sign a glowing recommendation before the Hong Kong operation had started. Even without luck, he would be able to sign another contract within a few weeks.

A/N: Though the recovery rate of mustache man is impressive, this fic was more driven by the character just known as Underling A. I was certain he died in the first episode he showed up in and Gates just kept killing all his attendants, but apparently it was all the same guy. Why in the world does he keep coming back? Does Amalgam have an incomparable dental plan or something?

Another fic that the Twelve Shots Of Summer challenge helped me get off the ground. You should go give the community a look see.