Steam rose from the drains lining the sides of the road. The bitter scent of Republic City's sewers mixed with the heady perfume of ash. Even months after the attack, much of the city still lay in ruin. The fires that overwhelmed this district had dwindled to mere charcoal, quickly cooling to scarred rock. Yet even among the debris, she could hear the scattered voices of people creeping back, exploring the deserted buildings. Republic City never ceased to surprise her. Every time the city was ruined, the people grumbled, then got on with their lives.
Her eyes swept over the ruined street in front of her, Kuvira's spirit laser had cut a broad gash through the apartments lining the road and the remains of those buildings lay scattered. She found herself coming back to this district frequently. At first, she was helping the police and the United Republic forces find survivors among the wreckage. As the days passed, they found fewer and fewer survivors, and more of the dead. It was bad enough finding those who had died when the laser swept through, killing them instantly in a burst of spirit energy. It was even worse finding those who had died, trapped, waiting for someone to come save them.
She knew it could have been much worse, and when she forgot, her friends were quick to remind her. For all their faults, Prince Wu and President Raiko had ordered an evacuation, so only a stubborn few were still in the buildings during the attack.
She wasn't sure why she continued to return to this area; with all the time that had passed, everyone had either been rescued or died waiting. Yet, she still felt obliged to patrol the streets. The faces of families who'd lost someone in the attack haunted her. In the first few days, every time she returned from a rescue mission, dozens pressed forward, holding up pictures of their loved ones, begging her to return their mother, father, partner, or child to them. Each day, fewer waited at the steps of the temporary police department.
Every broken face reminded her of how lucky she'd been during the attack. The people she loved were safe and alive, there for her when she came home. Mako had suffered the worst injury and his broken arm had healed quickly under the careful ministrations of the Water Tribe healers her father and cousins had sent to help care for the wounded. The only person they'd lost in the attack on the Colossus was Hiroshi Sato, Asami's father.
She closed her eyes. A small smile creased her face, her mind filled with thoughts of her beloved Asami. Not only had her friends escaped mostly unharmed, but at Varrick's wedding, she realized Asami reciprocated her feelings for her. Traveling to the Spirit World with Asami had been more than she'd ever dreamed. Even though they cut their vacation to only a few days as she felt guilty about abandoning the rescue efforts, she had never felt happier than those days of bliss.
A sharp tug at the reins jerked her out of her daydreams. Naga had turned sharply and bolted down an alley, nearly throwing Korra from her saddle.
"Naga, Naga! Slow down girl, what's going on?" Korra said, struggling to regain control.
Her polar bear dog continued to bark as she charged after whatever had caught her attention. As quickly as she'd started, she came to a stop in front of a door. Hidden in the alley, the door remained firmly attached to the building. Korra jumped down from the saddle. Naga turned her head to face Korra, ears perked and tail wagging expectantly.
She rolled her eyes and gave Naga a pat on the head. "I'm glad that not everything here is destroyed, but did we really need to–"
She froze. An unfamiliar voice spoke from behind the door. "You have your orders. For the Great Uniter, we will not fail."
"Earth Empire soliders!" Korra turned and whispered to Naga, "Good girl, now let's see who's waiting for us." She put a hand on the stone wall and closed her eyes, feeling for the vibrations through the earth. What waited within came to her in pieces. Two rooms on the ground floor and one above. Boxes of armour and weapons upstairs. A single mecha suit in the back room.
Although she hadn't mastered the seismic sense like Lin, she had one advantage as the Avatar. She focused her breath and reached out with her mind, feeling for the faint heat of people's bodies. Like radio static melting into music, the scattered images in her mind's eye settled. Five bodies. Three standing in the front room, one climbing the stairs, and one crouched beside the mecha suit.
She stepped back from the wall. How had they smuggled a mecha suit into downtown Republic City? She could handle five soldiers, but she needed to prevent them from activating the suit. If it came alive, the tight space would mean she'd likely need to pull the building down on top of them to stop it. Always a possibility, but one that would likely kill the five soldiers.
Korra placed her hand back on the wall, focusing on the soldier by the mecha suit, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. The soldier stood. Korra could feel her every heartbeat. One step, then two. Closer to the doorway between the rooms. Just one more step and they'd be through. Korra took a breath.
Her fist shot forward. The door flew from its hinges and landed with a bang. The soldiers turned. Her foot slammed into the ground, raising a wall of rock to split the rooms.
"The Avatar!" one shouted.
She felt their chi shift before she saw them move. She dodged left, metal flying past her ear. A quick uppercut and a pillar of rock threw one into the ceiling. Right hook, left hook. Two bursts of fire flew at the soldiers. One dove to his left. The other blocked with his bracer. Seeing her opportunity, Korra leapt towards him, amplifying her punch with a shockwave of air.
He crumpled to the ground. Two left and one upstairs. One had rolled to one knee and sent a wave of rock rippling through the ground. The earth shifted underneath her and she let it throw her into the air, launching into a forward flip. Her leg slashed downward, wreathed in flame. The soldier covered his face, but the force crushed him against the floor.
She turned. The last soldier had run down the stairs and made a break for the door. The other was using her earthbending to clear a path to the buried mech.
"No, you don't!" Korra swept her arm across and a lasso of air broke the soldier's stance. She followed with a second blast to air to make sure the woman stayed down. She ran towards the door, coming out into the brilliant sunlight.
Naga stood over the last soldier, unconscious at her feet. At the sight of Korra, she nudged the soldier with her nose, then looked back at Korra, panting and wagging her tail.
"Okay girl, you've earned it." Korra walked over and reached into one of her saddlebags, pulling out a piece of dried fish jerky. "Good work today. Let's gather these guys up and call Lin," she said, tossing the jerky into her companion's waiting mouth. She pulled out the radio that Lin had given her when they started looking for survivors. She pushed the button and waited for the crackle. "Come in. This is Korra. I've captured five Earth Empire soldiers. I'm in the Old Downtown, Block B, near the corner of Eighteenth and Luen Wan."
A few seconds passed before the dispatcher responded, "Copy that. Eighteenth and Luen Wan. Police are en route."
While she waited, Korra gathered up the five soldiers and bound them with some spare rope she had brought with her. She grabbed one of them by the collar and forced him to look at her. "What were you trying to do here? What were you planning?"
"I'll never tell you. I'll never betray the Great Uniter!"
"Your Great Uniter told you to stand down!"
"It doesn't matter what lies you Republic City scum spread, we will fight for the Great Uniter until our last breath."
Korra threw her arms up with a frustrated sigh, then walked off to wait for the police to arrive. Soon, she heard the police van approaching and she stepped out into the street to flag it down. It pulled up near her, flanked by two police on motorcycles. As two police from the van walked to the alley to collect the soldiers, one of the motorcycle riders walked over to Korra and pulled off his helmet.
"Mako! What are you doing here?" She put her arms around him and pulled him into a hug. As she released him, she said, "How's the arm by the way?"
"With Wu staying in Republic City at least until the negotiations about the Earth Kingdom are done, I was able to convince Lin to give me my old job back. Wu still wants me to come to Ba Sing Se with him when he gets around to leaving, but I'm a detective for a least a few months now." He put his hands on his hips and frowned at Korra. "The more important question is what are you doing here? Lin called off the search weeks ago."
"We could still find people Mako! There could be survivors out there waiting for us right now!"
"Korra, I understand you want to help, but we haven't found a survivor in a month. At some point, we have to accept that anyone who's still missing won't have survived."
Korra's eyes fell and she looked down at her feet as she answered, "You don't understand. Every day those people come to me, hoping that I'll find their loved ones. They have to know that their Avatar is still trying to find them. That's the only thing keeping their hope alive."
Mako paused, then gently put his hands on Korra's shoulders. "Korra, look at me." She looked up into his eyes, filled with concern for her. "You're not just the Avatar. You're Korra. You've got to take care of yourself. Just think of what would happen if you got yourself hurt – Bolin would be devastated!"
A slight smile crept on Korra's face. "Yeah, Bolin would take it pretty hard. The last thing I want is to get laid up in a hospital and be forced to listen to hours of his stories while I recover."
"You're lucky you don't live with him, it's nothing but 'Opal this, Opal that.' I swear, those two really need to get a room."
Korra laughed, the stress starting to leave her body. "Yeah, Opal's not much better. They're pretty much perfect for each other." She paused, then smiled at Mako. "You win. I'll try to take it easy."
"Sergeant Mako. We've loaded the prisoners. Whenever you're ready." One of the police interrupted their conversation, calling over from the van.
He turned to the officer. "Thanks Lee, I'll be there in just a second."
"Sergeant Mako? Look at you go," Korra said with a smile and a gentle punch to the arm that hadn't been broken.
"Ah, yeah," he said, looking a little embarrassed, "between the Kuvira thing and taking care of Wu, I got a promotion. Anyway, I've got to go. Police business, you know." He put his helmet back on and got on his motorcycle.
Korra laughed and gave him a wave as she walked over to Naga, "Go get 'em Sarge." She gave Naga a pat on her head, then leapt into the saddle. "Alright girl, you heard the man, I guess it's time to take a break. Let's go see if Asami is still at her workshop."
"And here you are. One helping of Bolin's world-famous rock noodle soup. Hold your applause," Bolin said, placing a bowl in front of his girlfriend. He placed another bowl on his side of the table and sat down across from her.
She giggled and took a spoonful of soup from the bowl.
"Careful, careful! It's still hot!" Bolin reached out, inadvertently earthbending Opal's spoon out of her hand and into her bowl.
"Thanks Bolin, but I think if I could handle Earth Empire soldiers, I can handle a little bit of soup, even if it is Bolin's world-famous rock soup." She airbent a blast of wind into her soup before fishing out her spoon.
"Sorry, you know I can't help but worry about you."
"I know you do, and it's really sweet." She took a sip of the soup and her eyes widened in delight. "Bolin, this is amazing! Where'd you learn to cook like this?"
"I've been practicing a lot lately. It's a family recipe from Grandma Yin, with a little Bolin magic," he added with a wink.
Opal smiled good-naturedly, "Well, you know how I love your Bolin magic." He grinned in response, but she noticed that his grin wasn't quite as broad as usual. "Hey Bolin, is something bothering you?"
"W-what? No, no, everything is absolutely, 100 percent, A-OK!" He took a big scoop of the soup and went to shove it in his mouth. "Better not let the soup get– YEEOWW!" he dropped his spoon as the scalding hot liquid touched his lips.
"Bolin! Are you okay?" Opal stood up and hurried over to him.
"Ah'm okay, just burned ma mouth a little," Bolin said, mouth still wide open.
Opal airbent her chair around the table to her and sat down beside Bolin, holding his hand in hers. "Bolin, you can tell me what's wrong. We're in this together, okay?"
He sighed and looked down at his soup. "Well, I just feel like I'm not doing anything useful. You're out with the airbenders helping to maintain balance, Mako's got his job back at the police department doing police things, Asami's busy running Future Industries and rebuilding the city, Korra's got her Avatar stuff, but I'm just sitting around doing nothing."
"Bolin! I had no idea this was bothering you so much. But don't say you're useless. With Mako out on police business so much, who would look after your family if you weren't here?"
"I know, it's just, you guys are all out doing these big, amazing things, and changing the world, and I'm just ordinary, old Bolin."
"I don't know about anyone else, but I think you're pretty extraordinary," she said, giving him a kiss on his cheek.
He brightened up, gazing into her mint-coloured eyes. "What did I ever do to deserve you?"
"Well, there was that time you got us tickets to Varrick's latest mover, and that time you won me a stuffed porcupine horse at the Omashu fair," her tone was innocent as she listed them off, ticking each on a finger as she went, "oh, and that time you saved my entire family from a crazed dictator's prison camp. Hmm, probably the stuffed porcupine horse."
Bolin laughed and said, "Okay, okay, I get it."
Opal smiled back. "But if it's really bothering you that much that you don't have a day job, why don't we find you one?"
"Well, I thought about that, but the last couple times I got a job, it didn't turn out so well. Ever since Mako and Korra left the Fire Ferrets, pro bending has been a no-go, Varrick was just using me to start a war when I was in the movers, and Kuvira, well, you know how that ended."
"Fair enough, wait, I know! You should go to the metalbending academy!"
"Uh Opal, you know I can't metalbend, right? And I've tried for years to learn, so I don't think a trip to the academy is going to help."
"No silly, I don't mean as a student, I mean as an instructor!"
Bolin's face went from puzzled to outright mystified. "How can I be a metalbending instructor when I can't metalbend?"
Opal smiled and flicked his nose with one finger. "Not a metalbending instructor, a lavabending instructor. You're the first lavabender in who knows how long that's not an evil psychopath."
"Hey, Ghazan wasn't that bad! Well, okay the Red Lotus did try and kill Korra, and he did turn the Northern Air Temple into a giant pool of lava and tried to drown us all in it, but he bought me goose pig dumplings on the way to Ba Sing Se!"
Opal giggled and said, "Okay, okay. Well you're still the only living lavabender. You should go see if the metalbending academy wants to expand their course offerings."
"You really think I'd make a good teacher?"
"If Grandma Toph could figure out how to teach people, I'm pretty sure anyone can."
"Oh. My. God! I hadn't even though about that! I could be just like Toph! Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!"
"See? You mentioned one time that you felt like you grew up without a nation and were jealous that I got to have two with Metal Clan and the Air Nation. But now you could be the first of a whole new group of lavabenders!"
"That would be so cool!" He gazed at Opal fondly and said, "You are just so smart. How did I end up with you?"
"Definitely the porcupine horse," she said with a wink, leaning in for a kiss. His hands ran through her hair as their lips touched, her mouth parting to let his tongue run along her bottom lip. She stood up and pulled him to his feet. "With all the airbending training, I don't get enough time with you," her hands started drifting down his chest, "think we can find someway to make it count?"
Bolin eagerly pulled her towards his bedroom, leaving Bolin's world-famous rock noodle soup forgotten on the table. "Can we ever!"