Chin liked to assume that things would turn out for the worst. He didn't think of this as some sort of hopeless pessimism, but more like optimism based on pragmatism. After all, if someone always assumed the very worst, then things could only end up better.
This stance had always helped him in Kuvira's Earth Empire: when others were loosening up because of an easy task or a predictable good outcome, Chin was always preparing for the worst possible scenario – and when things turned bad, he was always the only one who had an answer at hand. Eventually, this had earned him a nice rank and many loyal allies. From a lowly bureaucrat, he had risen to be a battalion commander within two years, and the end was still far away.
A powerful rival would rise and destroy everything he had done. Probably kill him too. Or President Raiko and his cronies would sabotage his agenda and ruin his life. Yeah, Chin was pretty darn sure that one of these was going to happen. It was inevitable.
He turned his eyes away from the large window, and with that, he let his thoughts return to the situation at hand. He had three men and a woman sitting in front of his desk in the office. They looked nervous, and somewhat scared too. The weak winter sunlight oozing through the windows couldn't have been helping their morale either: it was cold and feeble, like a breath of death.
Chin licked his lips and after glancing across the four, he turned back to the window. The sight of Ba Sing Se from his penthouse was splendid. From the top of the city's first skyscraper, the newly built maglev tracks encircled the city with perfectly symmetric silver lines, only piercing towards the center at the borders of the four city quadrants, and forming another circle around the city center. As Chin imagined, from a bird's view, Ba Sing Se should look like a large Earth Empire emblem.
He rolled up the leaflet in his hand, and after a moment of thinking, turned back to his people again for an in-depth look.
They were just as miserable when he had turned away from them to enjoy the skyline. Two of the men were younger, maybe in their mid-twenties. They wore simple green clothes that looked a lot alike – almost like they were wearing uniforms - and they had the same uppercut hair. The third man was older, with a grey, long hair and shaggy beard. His brown, messy clothes also separated him from the other two men just nicely. The woman was one of those Kuvira-wannabes Chin had always loathed: strict looking, nice and tight, radiating competence and professionalism. Unfortunately, the woman didn't have the body type to pull this off: she was good two heads taller than the men next to her, and her massive muscles put a real strain on her tight clothes. She was also too young, barely twenty at best, but Chin had a nudge that she wasn't even fifteen. Her blue eyes also ruined the overall picture, but between looking like a humanoid armadillo-lion and being barely legal for civilian service, this was the least concerning detail.
A heavy sigh rolled out from between Chin's lips as he finally decided to discuss the inevitable. He knocked his desk with the rolled up leaflet twice, then threw it in the front of the bunch. It landed gracefully at the feet of the old man who almost fainted from his poor luck. After a second of sweat-laden hesitation, he gathered enough strength to pick it up and give it back to Chin. He almost overturned the lamp on the desk with his shaking arm, but Chin was prepared for this, and caught the lamp just in time.
"I…" started the old man, but Chin silenced him with a hand wave.
"Who is responsible for this?" Chin's voice was calm, maybe even resigned. This almost freaked out the woman, but the young man sitting next to her snapped her out with an encouraging hand squeeze. It was cute, Chin had to give them that.
"It was a group effort," answered the other young man. "We are all responsible."
This was exactly what Chin wanted to hear. Smearing away responsibility like this was low for these people, but it couldn't be helped.
"Someone still had to come up with the idea," Chin noted casually. "Like, who wrote that thing?"
"It was me." From the sound of her voice, the woman was truly close to fainting. Luckily, Chin had asked for his strongest guards for today just for this case.
Chin rolled out the leaflet, and began to read its content out loud.
"We've been told to go home, but what awaits us there?" Making a small pause, he glanced through the group again with the same enthusiasm as a vulture would watch the thirsty wanderer in a desert. "Will it be glory? Will it be love? Or will we be blamed for every tear and hardship?" He gently kicked the side of his deck, just to add some dramatic tension. "Do you know what became of the URN's Equalists and their families? The lucky ones escaped during the night following Amon's ill-fated takeover. My brother was one of those lucky few - he lost the house he spent twelve back-breaking years paying for, he lost his wife because she could not forgive him what Amon did, he lost his children because she took them with her despite their tears, and he lost his inner drive...
because after Amon and Hiroshi Sato decided to set the city afire he could no longer trust his own judgment."
The two young men exchanged glances. Their faces were turning chalk-white, but it was still better than the woman's crimson-red expression that reminded Chin of the butts of those weird dancing monkeys from the skyscraper's waiting hall.
"We are well aware of the fact that you have only two sisters," added the old man cautiously. Chin just shook his head in disbelief and continued his reading.
"Am I giving my brother a free pass to be a bigot? No, but his story is important because it shows that the actions of one man, like Amon, or one woman, like Kuvira, cannot dictate the treatment of the groups they lead. Not every or even most Equalists were fanatic monsters like Amon and his right hand men. Most Equalists were like my brother who was tired of the position society pushed him into."
"My brother was an Equalist," admitted one of the young men. "It has ruined our family."
"By that same token we are not monsters! We are men and women who will not go back under the boots of an apathetic, greedy, hopelessly juvenile monarchy! We are not going to apologize for fighting for the rights and dignity of the common man or woman! We are not going to disappear along with our complaints or our dreams for the future! It doesn't matter if Kuvira was wrong in some of her actions - it doesn't matter if the Avatar beat her into submission."
The woman finally fainted. Two brawny guards immediately came in and took her away. They had some difficulty, but eventually managed to get her out of Chin's sight.
"What matters is that we are still the ones with mechas, we still stand a million
strong, and we do have the backing of most of the Earth Kingdom. Does that
mean we will continue forward with the fool's errand of attacking the URN? No. But we will
secure our borders, we will invest in infrastructure, and we will grow strong. Never again will
we allow Others to dictate our growth, our worth, and our lives. And if they try we will tear
them down like Kuvira should have torn down the Avatar."
"We do have mechas!" protested the other young man, but Chin drowned his words with a stern gaze.
"Those who do not agree are free to leave, but as for the rest of you - today marks our ascension!"
Reaching the end, Chin rolled the leaflet back up. He carefully sharpened one of its edges, and began to clean his nails with it. He did this all with nerve-racking composure, like what he had just read was just some sort of bad joke.
"So, did she come up with the idea too?" he asked after a long moment of silence.
"No, it was me," said the younger man with the Equalist brother. From the looks of it, he too was closing to a blackout.
"Guessed so." This was Chin's whole response.
He leisurely finished the nail cleaning, then handed the leaflet to the old man. He reacted fairly quickly, and touched the paper, setting it on fire with a small spark of his firebending. Chin watched as the flames consumed the leaflet, and threw it into a small metal container on his deck, prepared just for this occasion.
"Anything else?" Chin asked from the men, but all he got was lowered heads. He could almost smell their shame and regret in the air. "Good."
Now it was finally the time to end this inconvenience once and for all. Chin knew that they couldn't trust these guys with acting rationally all by themselves, so he had to open their eyes.
He started this with leaving the warm comfort of his chair. Chin walked to the window, but he was constantly watching the trio by their reflections. They now looked relieved, as Chin had just made it clear that he hadn't planned any serious punishment for them. If he had done that, he would have already presented it.
"I'm the legally elected governor of Ba Sing Se," he started thoughtfully. The men listened closely. "My battalion joined the City Watch, and they have been serving as the city's peacekeeping force ever since then. As the governor, I still have quite a bit of control over them, but it is nothing like back in the days of the Earth Empire. They are no longer my battalion per se." He turned back towards the men and shot them a stern gaze. "There is no such thing as 'Chin's Army' anymore, no matter what certain elements in the city want to think."
"They are still your men!" protested the young man without the Equalist brother, but the old man silenced him with an elbow in the side.
"Yes they are, just like everyone in Ba Sing Se." Chin made a small pause to let his words sink. "The Earth Empire has fallen. Anyone who is still clinging into it is a troublemaker and a potential insurrectionist."
"They cannot abandon the cause they fought for under Kuvira's banner," added the old man grumpily. "Many of them feel betrayed and ostracized. They roam the Earth States and all they can find is the same chaos they tried to dissolve." He looked up at Chin, and his eyes brightened up as he reached the most burdensome part. "But Ba Sing Se stands strong under your rule! The former soldiers of the Earth Empire flock into the city so that they can enjoy this little fraction of order, a ghost of the Empire! They all secretly hope that one day, you will sally forth from the city and conquer the states once more, just as Kuvira did it four years ago! You are their last hope Chin!"
Chin only replied with a hearty laugh.
"This explains the sudden spike of rebellious activity in my city." The old man aged a few years on the spot upon seeing how Chin shrugged off his words. "I thought that the Republic City Triads were making a new home here…"
As he turned back to the window, Chin could feel a ball growing in his stomach. He had the numbers on these newcomers, and they weren't pleasing. If the old man had spoken the truth, then the city was on the brink of a full-scale riot, led by men and women with remarkable military training.
This turn of events was a great shame. Ba Sing Se had changed a lot in the last four years, the chaos that followed the Red Lotus Uprising was quelled quickly by Kuvira, and the city had been restructured to support her war efforts. The walls had been brought down by those anarchists, so the three Rings had been replaced with four Quadrants – one for each quarter of the heavens – and the palace had been demolished to give place to the new city center. As a matter of fact, Chin's skyscraper was standing on the former throne room. With extensive use of earthbending and metalbending, the city had been completely rebuilt in no time. Massive factories had grown out from nothing and the slums had been turned into spacious apartment complexes dotted with serene parks.
Yes, Ba Sing Se was maybe the largest and most prosperous city in the world, and Chin had all its assets at his command.
No, it was even more.
Chin sighed under the weight of his thoughts. This wasn't just about a bunch of disgruntled soldiers and their dreams for an old cause.
"Now, I will only give you a warning," he addressed the men ultimately. "You think you are doing something good, but I assure you, you aren't. To make things worse, you involved me without my consensus, or even my knowledge. That was… very unwise." He pushed a button on his desk and the door of his office opened up. "Leave, and never come into my sight again."
He could see tears in one of the young man's eyes as they left his office. It was saddening, but not in the way those three thought. They had tried to turn Chin into a hero, and they had failed terribly. Just the fact that they were serious about this filled Chin's heart with anger and disappointment. These people were trouble, yet, they wanted only good… just in the worst possible way.
Chin sat back to his chair, and after a few minutes of pondering, he reached for his phone. The secretary on the other end needed some time to answer the call.
"Governor? How can I be at your service?" The young, lively voice calmed Chin's mood a little. It was just good to hear that someone else had a fairly nice day.
"Please send a message to Director Jing that we must meet tomorrow at our favorite place in the right time."
"At your favorite place in the right time? Uhm… That's all?"
"Yes. She will know."
"Consider it done sir!"
"Thank you."
With this done, Chin left his office and entered the opposite room. It was empty sans a small cushion in the middle. Chin sat down on this, turning his back to the door. In front of him laid an ornate window looking at his penthouse garden. His eyes glanced through the thick green vines and the tiny purple flowers that filled the garden, until he could feel the lightness in his body.
Then he closed his eyes, left his physical form behind, and entered the Spirit World.