The Legend of Korra
Legacy of the Red Lotus
I recommend watching the full Legend of Korra and The Last Airbender series before reading this piece, but it's not entirely necessary. Allow me to warn you that this piece will contain graphic violence and disturbing/adult situation, but other than that, buckle up. This is going to be a chaotic journey, as I show you what I believe is the truth that spawned the Red Lotus, and how its legacy is evident in worlds fictional and otherwise...
At long, long last, peace. The Equalists were neutralized, Unalaq defeated, and the anarchists of the Red Lotus were all, finally, gone forever. This time, even Tenzin hadn't made more than the most perfunctory of protests when the legions of populist politicians had shouted for the death penalty, and even Tenzin hadn't flinched when the axe had swung down, forever ending the threat that organization posed.
But still, those extremists… they still made Tenzin shiver. Even now, months after their final defeat, they terrified him. Their goals were insane, impossible; even they had to know that. And what they had done had, very quickly, amounted to nothing at all. The Earth King had seized control of his kingdom, albeit with difficulty, and in the rest of the world—Republic City, and even most of the Earth Kingdom itself—life went on.
It comforted Tenzin to think that those radicals would amount to a mere footnote in the history books within only a few years. They'd be a bad memory at worst, or just another notch on Korra's belt at best. Either way, they were over and done with, and they would never come back again.
And the public knew this, no matter how hard the politicians and so-called community organizers tried to rouse them. The economy was picking up—the stocks of several multinationals sold in the Republic City market had tripled that day, and, Tenzin told himself, it had almost nothing to do with the package of legislation that he'd slipped into the lawbooks at precisely eleven pm, fifty nine minutes, and fifty nine seconds.
He raised a thimble-sized cup to his lips. It was a work of art, hand-turned and then carved with the face of Avatar Aang. The trademark on the bottom marked it as an original, and there were only five others like it in the world. Together, they had sold for enough money to pay for the upkeep of Aang Memorial Island for five years, as well as a new vacation home on Ember Island.
And the tea blend within it was a masterpiece in its own right. It was only farmed once every ten years, worth its weight in gold, and he'd sworn to himself, long ago, that he'd only partake of it when he earned it. That aroma, that rich deep mahogany color, that shimmering flawless liquid surface—
And then the door to his silent study was thrown open so hard that it dented the fine panel wall opposite. The offender was neither Peema nor Meelo, but, of all people, Korra. Livid faced and seething, she stormed toward his desk.
After a moment of internal debate, Tenzin returned his teacup to his desk. And then, ever serene, ever graceful, he stood.
"Korra," he said gently, "it's been some time since I've seen you. How are you? Have you recovered completely? What's going on—"
And then she slammed the answer to his question down on the wood surface in front of him. The impact halved the amount of tea in his cup. But Tenzin ignored that and looked at the roughspun canvas poster the Avatar was staring at. And then he understood.
"Korra, this means nothing," Tenzin said. "So someone mailed you a poster with the symbol of the Red Lotus; so what? It's the handiwork of idle rich teenagers, no doubt. Nothing more."
"The symbol of the Red Lotus, in my mailbox, today," Korra seethed, "and you're saying it's nothing?"
"It's what bored young adults do when they don't have proper supervision. Some of them riot and smash windows while chanting political slogans. Others use drugs on street corners. Still others get into street racing. That's how young people are, and these so-called heirs of the Red Lotus are no different," Tenzin said. "You've gotten letters from them before, but the White Lotus usually screens your mail. They must have gotten busy today. That's all."
"I've gotten these in the past-why wasn't I told about this?!" Korra demanded.
"Because you were injured and needed to rest, Korra," Tenzin said. "We didn't want to stress you over nothing."
"Nothing?" Korra repeated. "Nothing?" She stared at Tenzin for a moment. When he didn't respond, she reached toward his radio and cranked up the volume. Static filled the room until she dialed in to a particular station, where a frantic newscaster was yelping into a broken microphone.
"—again, this is Li Wen, coming at you live, right from central Republic City. Our building has been bombed, I repeat, our building has been bombed. The ground floors are gone and the whole thing's on fire and we have no escape—"
"Li Wen? He's from Voice of the Republic," Tenzin heard himself say. "They share a building with—"
"—ahm, ahm, I think the bomb went off in the police station, but I'm not sure. I—there's too much smoke—I can't see what's going on. One of my—my colleagues are telling me that before the explosion, they were hosting a group of interviewees from Republic University… everything was going just fine, but then they began to post up symbols of the Red Lotus, and then—and then the bomb went off. There were so many wounded and the fires—they're getting closer, oh my God—"
Tenzin strode to his window. He threw the embroidered velvet curtains open and peered at Republic City, so proud and modern and strong, and the blazing smoking glass skyscraper flanked on each side by others like it. Fire trucks crowded around it, blaring their sirens desperately, but even their longest ladders couldn't reach the screaming faces in the windows.
There was a crack, then, like the sound of thunder, but a thousand times deeper and more terrible. And then, as Tenzin and Korra watched, the building shook, then contorted, then plunged into the ground with a horrible belch of dust and flame and crushed lives.
But somehow—somehow—the reporter screamed, and screamed, and screamed and screamed, until Korra, sobbing silent tears, unplugged the radio.
But Tenzin remained silent. And so it was in silence that he stepped back to his desk and slapped his teacup and its contents clear across the room.
The Avatar, Tenzin, the leader of the White Lotus, Lin Beifong, the President of the City himself. All were walking as briskly as they could, and all around them were a full battalion of the White Lotus's finest. Patrolling the skies were metalbending police and a contingent of Republic Army airships.
Technically, since no state of war had been declared, that final detail might have been illegal. But the media wouldn't report on that, not since they were on-site with their cameras rolling and their money jangling in the pockets of half of the city's police force.
Republic University, forerunner of modern pedagogy. It normally teemed with students; the flower gardens and water fountains in the pavilion were especially popular, but now the place was a ghost town. Even the ten store glass and stone headquarters building that towered over the rest of campus was dark, silent.
With the President at her side, Korra strode up to the front door. Then she kicked it clear off its hinges. An empty dark corridor greeted her.
Tenzin pilled in behind her along with the leader of the White Lotus and several of his underlings. They hopped behind the reception desk, checked several of the nearby rooms—but there was no denying it. The whole place was empty.
"Cowards!" Korra shouted.
"Cowards!" the empty buildings shouted back at her.
"All we wanted to do was to talk, and you didn't have the guts to meet us? When it's your students who killed people? Cowards!" she screamed. But still, only her own echo answered her.
She stood still for a moment, with her fists clenched and her eyes burning. Soon, the air around her hands started to burn too. Tenzin strode toward her, and he might have had to restrain her, if he didn't appear.
He was so calm and collected that it was infectious. The smooth balanced gait of his stride, his freshly shaved face, his neat suit with not a crease out of place, and he was almost as tall as Tenzin but three decades younger.
He stood several yards in front of Korra. And then he bowed, and then he knelt and touched his forehead to the floor. There he kept it as he spoke.
"Forgive me, Avatar Korra," he said. "The board… they gave me their word that they'd receive you. And I believed them. Forgive me, Avatar Korra," he repeated. And still he remained on his hands and knees.
"Forgive you?" Korra said. Unconsciously she had moved to his side and ushered him to his feet with her hands, until he towered over her again. His chest was broad and his arms were toned, but still his waist as almost as narrow as hers.
"But what have you done?" Korra said. "And who are you?"
"Chang Beifong at your service. No relation to our honored police chief," he said, bowing his head at Lin. His breath smelled of mint and thyme and his voice was low and soft. "I'm the president of the student's union here at Republic University. The board insisted that I join them to receive you, but I would have anyway, Avatar Korra," he said. "Some of the young people who were responsible for the bombing this afternoon… I knew some of them," he said.
"Then you must know why they did this." It was Tenzin who said that. And when he stepped forward, Korra saw that that Chang had a couple of inches on him after all.
But Chang simply shook his head once. "I wish I did. But I have no idea. I saw some of them earlier today itself, and they were the same as always… happy, smiling kids. I could never have seen this coming. No one could have seen this coming."
"Then what do you think caused it?" Tenzin said. "An organized, planned attack like that… there had to be some reason for it."
"But I can't think of any, Master Tenzin," Chang said. "Most of them were well off with good grades. A few had problems with alcohol and other things, but over all, there's nothing that I know that might have pressed them to do… to do…"
His voice cracked and he simply pointed out the window at where smoke still rose from the crater gouged out from the center of the city.
"So I was right all along," Tenzin said, practically sneering. "The idle work of rich, bored teenagers. I was right all along."
"But Tenzin, that doesn't explain why they'd kill themselves," the head of the White Lotus said. "That kind of sacrifice demands some sort of motivation, no matter how insane!"
But Tenzin had no ears for him. Instead he turned to Korra, Korra and Chang.
"The time is now," he said. "Go out into the streets and make yourself shown. Both of you." He turned to Chang. "It was your peers who did this. You have to make it clear to the rest of them that this kind of behavior is not acceptable, and that you stand beside the Avatar, and against the terrorists."
Korra turned to the leader of the White Lotus, watching as the man stroked the frayed end of his beard.
"It's risky," he said. "A high visibility, high publicity act of defiance… but Tenzin's right," he said. "If we show these heirs of the Red Lotus that we're not afraid, then we can rally the public to our cause. And maybe they won't be afraid, either."
Lin nodded. So did the Republic's President. And so the Avatar took the leader of the student body by the hand and led him out into the campus, where the eyes of the city and the world were upon them.
And with her fingers still intertwined with Chang's, Korra glared right back. Citizens of every nation were watching, along with politicians, and heads of state, and maybe, somewhere, other followers of the Red Lotus.
"I have no fear of you," Korra seethed. "No fear," she repeated. "No fear."
"No fear," Chang joined in. "No fear."
The chant spread to Tenzin and Lin. Then the leader of the White Lotus and the President of the Republic. And then the White Lotus bodyguards standing around them, and then the metalbending police in the air.
And then the frightened faces in the windows of the dorms trickled outside, joining in the chant. And then there were a hundred of them, and then a thousand. One university, one city, one voice, one soul. Korra and the White Lotus guards were so caught up in the moment that they never quite noticed the canvas bag discarded on the ground. Not until it began to smoke, and then, with the full force of the pound of TNT it contained, explode.