Crouching in the undergrowth isn't exactly among the techniques she'd been taught as overly covert. For anyone who was looking, the dark-haired girl hiding (and not particularly well) in the bushes is clearly up to something. Tahno's voice is bleeding obnoxiously through her com, and in a fit of temper she is tempted to rip it out of her ear and throw it away, into the river. Then she would be well and truly screwed - Iroh would no doubt chew her out good and proper when she slunk back into base and there would be countless disciplinary actions to follow. How disappointed her old mentor, and her uncle, Tenzin, would be. She can imagine the severe points of his eyebrows already.
"Korra, come in," Tahno repeats, and she can see his lip curling as he says it, "Iroh has called the mission off. It's too dangerous. Lose your tail and come back to the safe house."
She knows she's pretty infamous for being stupidly gung-ho, but she is just as well-known for producing results. It's not like the backhanded whispers in the cold, clinical halls of the base back in London go completely unnoticed. She might be overly passionate and a bit too eager, but she is not stupid. Surely that is obvious enough in her track record. One of Britain's secret service's bright young things: a field agent at twenty one, in hard-target countries by twenty three.
Korra grits her teeth together, before whispering a hurried reply: "I can get him," she insists, because she knows she can. She's old and experienced enough now to know when she is out of her depth, and right now she isn't. The target is sitting in a streetside bazaar with a cup of something cradled between his hands and she is in the bush, waiting. If she unfolded herself and walked nonchalantly away, that would be it. Hours of toil in a London office block gathering intelligence for nothing.
"If you go ahead with this you'll be off grid," Tahno warns her, though there is nothing like caution in his voice. It is thin, and reedy and a little bit grating, almost as if he is baiting her into doing it. She convinces herself that if it were Iroh's smooth lilt then she might have taken her orders into account. As it is, she pulls the com out of her ear and buries it into the roots of the bush. Best not to have it on her person if things get out of hand later.
"I'm going to get him," she says with a smirk, knowing that Tahno can hear her but not reply. She wonders then if he smiles, or smacks his palms into the desk in frustration. They have not always gotten along.
She finally stands up, making time to stretch out her hamstrings and her shoulders. She walks into the bazaar with the nonchalant curiosity of a tourist, though her actions are anything but - she haggles discreetly with a little old woman selling hats from a stall for a straw sunhat, and then moves over to browse traditional Chinese wear, ornate silk jackets and matching slippers. She arranges the sunhat over her hair, which she had cut short and dyed a darker colour than usual, in a typically seen style around this particular city. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the target putting down his cup, and glancing around himself before moving out into the street. She buys a street map from a neighbouring vendor, and follows him.
He is not particularly discerning - seeing as he had started off as her tail, lost her, and regained her without his knowledge - and by the time he reaches his destination Korra is not being as careful as she should have been. She is marching down the street with her face stuck in the street map (if it is impossible to blend in, stand out in the most usual of ways) and when something hard jostles her she looks first in the direction of the man she had been following. He is stood stock still, lingering on the edge of a back alley with a paper-white face, eyes wide and eyebrows high on his forehead, staring right at her. Or, more appropriately, at the man she had just bumped into. Before she can move to follow, he turns and disappears into the dark. Only then does she turn her attention towards the man who she had just bumped into. His hand has curled hard around her wrist and he tugs her towards him, into his chest. He smells familiar, and she swallows thickly.
"Hasook..." she says, and the quality of her voice drops down into a whine.
"You should have listened to mother," he growls into her ear, his fingers pushing into the sinews in her arms until it burns. "And none of this would have had to happen. It is such a shame, Korra. You had so much potential."
Potential that was going to go to waste, now. He twists them into position with an ease that comes from a lot of practise, and the fact that Korra's body is as malleable as putty, with the gun pressed into the small of her back there was not much else that she could do. They walk towards the back alley her tail had disappeared into, wrapped against each other like a young couple blissfully in love.
There is no bargaining she could do now, no reasoning with this traitor. The two of them had been intimately acquainted before. There was nothing that brought people closer together than acting as field agents on the same mission. They had been undercover together in Russia, when Korra was still a rookie. The same mission had brought to light Hasook's as a double agent for the other side - a small fact brought into the system by the very girl he had his arms wrapped around now. He might break her neck, the way he was holding her. Or shoot out her stomach. He had a vast array of options, though only one was acceptable.
"The boss wants to meet you," he says, gruffly, betraying the fact that either previous option that resulted in the girl's instant death would have been vastly preferable.
"The boss?"
"Don't pretend that you're stupid, Korra," he spits, and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand in distaste, "it doesn't suit you."
"They'll find me," she warns him then, eyebrows pulled together and lips harshly pursed.
"Oh, no they won't," Hasook is smirking, then, intolerably smug, "that little trick you pulled back at the bazaar made sure of that. You are firmly off-grid, kiddo."
A/N: This is very much an AU, based around the British Intelligence Service (though by no means accurate). It's going to be a bit of a multishipper thing because that is good for drama and I don't particularly ship anything in LoK so I am open to pretty much anything! Bending doesn't exist in this, unfortunately for Korra at this moment in time! more will be revealed very soon, this is pretty much just a taster! I hope you enjoyed, and if you did (or didn't) be sure to tell me by reviiiiewwwinggg!
This is being reuploaded from [flubetoob] another account of mine :)