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Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra are property of Nickelodeon and Viacom.


DAWN


Asami is six when she loses her parents.

She runs, terrified, from her father's workshop, trying desperately to outrun the horrible, leatherwinged thing that screeches as it follows her. Hiroshi follows her out, exasperated but nonetheless concerned as his screaming daughter bolts through the back door of the manor's kitchen. The next fifteen minutes are a hell in and of themselves, as Hiroshi turns the house upside down in his search for his disappeared daughter.

Finally, Hiroshi finds her cowering underneath a chair in his study and flinching at every small noise. He kneels, peering beneath the seat.

"Asami, it's alright. You can come out…" he murmurs, voice soft.

"Don' wanna," the child murmurs, shaking her head vigorously.

"Asami – that wolfbat meant no harm. It flew into the workshop by accident, and it didn't know how to get out. It was afraid."

Asami frowns, the concept seemingly unfamiliar to her. "Scary things get afraid?"

Hiroshi nods, a small smile on his face. "All things do."

"Even the scary ones?"

"Especially the scary ones," Hiroshi murmurs, before reaching out for her. "Now, come on – your mother's made dinner for the both of us. And I don't want to keep her waiting…"


Asami feels afraid, she knows that much.

She steps out into the corridor, the carpet soft under her tiny feet. There's the smell of smoke in the air, and something else – Asami can only remember whenever her father tried his hand at cooking and burnt a large steak.

As she makes her way down the corridor, she notices things, in the low light – the odd scorch mark here and there, tables and cabinets upturned, their contents scattered across the floor in front of her. She steps over them carefully as she navigates towards her parent's room, hoping that she can spend the night hidden away in their arms.

She hears her father's voice first, loud and hoarse and terrible, as he screams his wife's name. Asami shrinks back from the open door, wincing, and only then realises that the door is hanging off of one hinge, its lock broken off. That burnt smell is strong now, impossible to ignore.

Asami reaches out to grab the doorframe, to peek in timidly, when she hears a rush of air, and the bedroom lights up with vivid orange. Her father screams in agony, and Asami cowers behind the doorframe until he stops. Slow footsteps come towards her, and she looks up. Stepping out of the doorway is a tall, reedy dark haired man, with a thin moustache and cruel, narrowed eyes. He stinks of smoke, and Asami slowly backs away from him, terrified.

The man smirks in the darkness, his teeth gleaming, and then disappears down the corridor, out of sight, a shadow melting into the darkness. Asami turns back to the doorway, and swallows, stepping into the room.

Asami looks at the bed, at the two charred forms that lie upon blackened sheets, and her entire world falls apart.


Asami's bundled up with a shock blanket, curled up on a chair in the police station. She only knows that it's the police station because her father had brought her along once.. The memory triggers another flash of the horribly burnt bodies, and her stomach twists, almost as if it's trying to tear itself apart.

In the background, she can hear the officers talking, but only a few of the conversations draw her attention.

"-Six years old, spirits –"

"-Agni Kai hit, no doubt. We'll go through Sato's employment records, look for ties-"

"-Got in through an unlocked door, the kitchen, most likely-"

Asami stiffens, horrific realisation chilling her to the bone. She stares ahead, blankly, her fingers clutching the shock blanket so tightly her nails are beginning to tear into the material. A few minutes later, one of the officers kneels in front of her.

"Hey, kid."

The woman's voice is low and weary, and Asami looks at her. The officer's hair is raven-black, but marred with prominent streaks of grey. There are two parallel scars running down one cheek, the deep lines distracting Asami for a moment.

"I'm Captain Beifong. Is there anything I can get you? Anything you need?"

Asami looks away, drawing in on herself, and Lin's mouth tightens.

"Who is he?"

The question catches Lin off-guard, but she replies quickly enough.

"We don't know. We think he's with a bending triad, most likely the Agni Kais."

It's not the answer the child is looking for, Lin knows this, but it's the only answer she has at the moment.

"…Why did he do it?" Asami murmurs, her voice cracking. Lin acts on instinct, police force posturing be damned, and draws the child into her arms.

"I don't know," Lin replies. "…And I'm sorry."

Asami cries quietly for the rest of the night.


The next six years are a blur for Asami. Her father's money shuffles her from boarding school to boarding school, to a chorus of incredibly gifted, but fails to apply herself and a distracted, disruptive child.

Asami could care less how she does in school. The needlessly complicated calculus and the flowery, turgid poetry that saturates her curriculum utterly fails to interest her. The only time she has ever felt truly engaged was on a field trip to a Cabbage Car factory, unable to take her eyes off the engineers assembling the automobiles in front of her. However, any mention of a desire to work with them is instantly dismissed. Asami is, according to her teachers, to be trained for a bright future in her late father's industrial empire, but behind a desk - not on the assembly line, much less in any kind of workshop.

With every week spent memorising useless fluff, Asami feels like her connection to her father is slipping away. The thought that these people are denying Asami her heritage makes her blood boil, and Asami finds herself sent to the principal's office with an increasing frequency, her hair tousled and the blood of her playground tormentors on her knuckles.

Finally, after she knocks out a girl's front teeth, she's expelled. Asami lets out a sigh of relief as the principal roars in her face, and prays, as she leaves the school grounds, that the next school will be at least interesting.

A man is waiting for her beside the gates, and Asami turns to face him, her hands balling up into fists on instinct. His face is hidden by a hood, and he does not speak. Asami watches with narrowed eyes as he reaches into his coat, withdrawing a sealed envelope. Asami takes it with curious fingers, and glances down at it. When she looks up again, the man is gone, having seemingly vanished.

She opens the letter, and reads. Later that night, she packs a bag and charters a taxi.

The letter gave an address, and promised one thing – that she would find what she was looking for. Dully, Asami thinks she may have acted too hastily, as her taxi pulls up beside a dilapidated, seemingly empty building, but she'd rather eat her own tongue than spend another minute being juggled by the social system.

"You sure you want to get out here?" The driver asks, voice cautious.

"Yeah. Thanks," Asami replies, handing him a crumpled mess of notes that could easily pay for several more trips. The driver's eyes light up, and he nods to her, before driving away, leaving her alone on the evening street, the skeleton of a building behind her.

She walks over to the door, and knocks precisely five times, as the letter told her to. The door unlocks with a click, and drifts open with a long, painful creak. She steps in, hesitantly, and looks around, peering through the darkness.

"I see you received my invitation," A voice from the blackness calls. Asami stiffens, and looks down the length of the hallway, searching for the source of the voice.

"Who are you?" Asami asks, cursing the tiny spike of fear that colours her voice.

"I was an old friend of your father's. I was terribly saddened to hear what happened to him – and to your mother, as well," the voice says. "They were fine people."

Asami swallows, her gaze dropping to the floor for a moment. "They were my parents," she breathes.

"Then let me ask you something," the voice says. Out of the darkness steps a tall, hooded man, his face hidden by a porcelain white mask. "Why did you come? What are you seeking?"

Asami meets the man's gaze, her expression hardening.

"I seek…revenge."


Amon assigns her to a tiny group of recruits, men and women far older than her who barely spare her a passing glance. Their words are brusque and rough, and even when a few act on their paternal or maternal instincts, Asami brushes them off callously. She does this without any hesitation, any remorse – no one will ever replace her parents in her mind. Asami tells herself that her solitude is a small inconveinience on the road to her reward.

In the morning, Asami trains her body, and when she feels she can go on no longer and her legs threaten to give way between her, she summons the memories of that night, imagines the smell and sight of charred flesh overwhelming her senses. She resumes the bruising sparring and conditioning with a hardness in her eyes that makes even her instructors flinch.

In the evening, Asami trains her mind, and Amon provides her with a complete education on mathematics, politics, and most importantly, engineering. Asami fails to hide her delight when the textbooks are finally delivered to her, and spends the rest of the night reading, despite her aching muscles. She feels a little closer to her father, afterwards, and sleeps peacefully.

At the end of every week, Amon holds seminars on the Equalist way, powerful speeches and rhetoric that pierce all the way to the core of Asami's being. Promises of equality, of vindication, of justice for her parents drive her onward as she steadily eclipses her peers in skill and strength.

By the tender age of fourteen, there are few in sparring that can pin her down, and those that do tire quickly.

Her skill doesn't go unnoticed. Amon arrives in the gym one morning, the men and women parting before him as he moves down the middle of the room, towards Asami. He tells her she's being reassigned to a new, elite unit, and Asami barely manages to hide the raw, primal joy that races through her.

She feels a little deflated, the next day. The elite unit is a completely different animal – their sparring sessions leave Asami aching in a way she hasn't since she first joined, and they bat aside her practiced techniques easily. Her peers are even less accepting of her than her original group was, and they only add to the fear and doubt gnawing at the back of her mind, whispering that she's out of her depth, unworthy.

Asami tries to pay such thoughts no attention.

Afterwards, Asami is introduced to a new form of balance training – a series of upturned wooden poles, each half a meter apart. She stands atop two, looking around cluelessly for a moment, before out of nowhere, her training partners begin to batter her with quarterstaffs. Within moments, Asami has fallen off, but the bruises blooming on her arms and chest can't possibly compare to the damage her ego's taken.

Amon arrives later that day, scrutinising each of the men and women. Asami can feel his eyes tracing the new bruises, the cut lip, the treacherous marks of her inexperience. He stares at her for several moments, before moving on, silent.

That night, she's kept awake by the image of her parent's corpses, of the firebender disappearing into the blackness, far beyond her reach.

The next morning, Asami promises herself that Amon will never look at her with dissatisfaction, not again. She forces herself to break the old, comfortable routines she has fallen into, wills herself to adapt. She cannot, will not let this break her.

The next time she approaches the wooden poles, she lasts only ten seconds, but that is five more than previous. Asami resolves to last twenty next time.

Slowly, steadily, Asami conquers the elite training just as she had the regular. The men and women of the unit watch her with rapt attention, but Asami doesn't care about them.

She strives only for attention from Amon himself.

A staff catches her in the stomach, forcing her back. Asami puts her weight on her front leg, and lets her back leg reach out, finding a pole behind her. Another staff hits the back of her front leg, and her steady stance crumples, but she catches herself on the way down, hands on poles to the left and right of her.

Her training partners all but beat her to death in their attempt to knock her down, but Asami does not drop to the ground, does not fall off. It is only when Amon calls for an end to the exercise do they stop.

This time, when Amon looks her over, there is approval in his eyes.

Asami's satisfaction is tangible.


Asami is eighteen now, all but the faintest traces of baby fat and innocence lost to the rigours of training, replaced with a hardened body and a disciplined mind. She is something every Equalist strives to be, her mind and body repurposed to serve the revolution. Amon tells her she is the genius that will drive their war effort – she designs new motorcycles, new automobiles that would make her father proud.

The Equalist movement is blossoming into something massive, something beautiful, its numbers swelling at an increasing rate. In the absence of the Avatar, the lost and vulnerable flock to Amon, eagerly lapping up his promises of a bright, fair future.

Still, Amon's promises aren't enough. Asami isn't satisfied by mere promises any more – she wants results. One night, she dreams of a world where a non-bender could hold the power of lightning in their hands, and sketches new schematics. The design becomes her life, and she shouts for joy when the prototype glove's pressure pad finally glows with an electrical charge.

Amon comes to her room some weeks later, intending to reprimand her for ignoring her training, but when Asami shows him the glove, his eyes light up with rare joy.

Once the design has been perfected, it is mass-produced, and as Asami watches trainees practice techniques with the glove on training dummies, she can almost feel her mother resting a spectral hand on her shoulder, whispering how proud she is of her daughter.

Soon after, Amon takes her in as his personal disciple, and Asami discovers that she still has far more to learn. To further develop her combat skills, Amon teaches her a multitude of styles he has mastered. Asami learns to mix her rigid, aggressive style with flowing, graceful Kyoshijutsu, and develops a new method of movement based on what Amon knows of airbending forms.

As the two recover from their training sessions, they exchange their ideas, their dreams for the future of the movement. Amon himself is pleasantly surprised to find that Asami has developed a strong set of beliefs, and the capability to argue for them, passionately and at length. Conversely, Asami learns that Amon is not so above it all as she once believed. When he isn't leading a revolution or inspiring his men, he is something of a poet, well versed in classics both musical and theatrical. One night, Asami jokes that Amon's not at all the man she thought he once was.

"Amon is not a man," he muses, sitting across from Asami one night. "Amon is an ideal – something incorruptible and everlasting. This mask," he indicates the white mask on his face, "Is more Amon than I am."

"But Amon's nothing without your skills," Asami retorts, frowning. "Without your knowledge and charisma. The Equalists would be nothing without the man under the mask."

"Perhaps," Amon nods, eyes crinkling with a smile hidden behind the mask. "But now the Equalists number in the thousands. The mere idea of Amon is enough to drive them onwards at this point. Whatever strengths I have, my mind and my body, they're dwarfed by the power of this symbol. This symbol can do many things, Asami – it can inspire people, or put the fear of the almighty in them."

Asami sits back, nodding slowly. She thinks she understands her leader a little better now. He's not a machine, not invincible, but he is a vessel for something that is.


Some weeks later, she and Amon are discussing the merits of the recent reinterpretation of Love Amongst the Dragons, when he finally reveals something to her.

"The Equalists will mount their first attack at the end of next week," Amon murmurs. "We're going after the triads."

Asami's mind races, anticipation and apprehension blending together into one indecipherable mix. She can only look at Amon questioningly, silently asking him to elaborate further.

"I'll be making the official announcement in the morning, but I thought you should know first."

"Why?" Asami replies, curious.

"We'll be assaulting an Agni Kai building," Amon says, watching as Asami stiffens. "I wanted to know if you wanted to join the Lieutenant in leading the operation."

Asami thinks hard, but it's difficult – old memories surge back to the surface, marring the night's casual atmosphere. She can hear her father's scream, smell the burning flesh –

"Asami!"

It only occurs to Asami then that she has been staring dully into space for several minutes, and Amon has been trying to get her attention for two. She meets his gaze, and nods silently.

"Are you sure?" He asks, voice careful and understanding.

"Yes," Asami replies, voice steady. "This is something I need to do."


As much as Asami's apprehensive about what's about to happen, she can't deny that there's an unmatched thrill of bounding over rooftops, flanked by peers, racing towards her destiny. They dance across the city, eventually coming upon the Agni Kai's stronghold in an unassuming, middle-class area.

The assembled group watches, hidden on an opposite rooftop, as Asami slips by the outdoor security, silent and unseen. She reaches the back of the building, and her hands move to her belt, opening one of its large pouches. Asami withdraws a small maintenance kit, before setting about cutting the power to the building.

Within moments, the windows darken, the sound of chairs scraping back in surprise and triad members shouting only barely muffled by the thin walls. From on their hiding spot on the opposite building, the Equalists emerge, climbing down its face and scuttling across the street, nearly invisible in the night.

Some take their positions beside Asami at the rear of the building, another at the front, and a group led by the Lieutenant climbs onto the roof, ready to invade from above.

"We're in place. We await your order," a small, wiry female mutters at Asami's side.

Asami stares ahead at the door, and closes her eyes, inhaling deeply. She swallows her fear, swallows the burning flesh and the screaming and the wolfbat in the workshop.

She opens her eyes.

"Go," Asami grunts, lunging forward and kicking out. The door is knocked clean off its cheap hinges, and Asami reaches into her belt again, hurling smokebombs into the rooms beyond. They charge into the manmade fog blind, relying only on their sense of hearing to find their prey, knocking down any human obstacles with knuckle and shin.

As they advance, faint glows illuminate the smoke around them. The darkness and smoke has done more than just mask the Equalist attack – it has marked nearly every single bender in the building, as they instinctively try to light up the space around themselves.

The Equalists move with newfound direction, chi-blocking the benders and disabling any non-bender cohorts. Asami is in the middle of the fray, dodging violent flares of flame and shocking any attacker into unconsciousness with her glove. She can hear screams and shouts of panic, mostly from the triad members, but occasionally, one of her group lets out a pained sound, and she looks around, distracted for a moment, only to receive superficial burns for her inattention.

Asami presses on, leaving her group behind. She tells herself they are doing their job so she can do hers, but she knows she is less of a leader for doing so. She moves up onto the first floor, which is far quieter than the floor below, almost silent. She looks around for any errant triad members, but only ends up running into fellow Equalists standing over them.

Resolving to sweep the top floor before she returns to the bottom, Asami dashes up the next staircase, footfalls feather-light, and moves onto a nearly pitch-black landing. She looks around, straining her eyes and ears, but can find nothing. She sighs, and turns back to the stairs, when a tall, unassuming closet to her right explodes outward, a triad member hurling flame towards her with a roar.

Asami barely manages to dodge the attack, rolling under it and hammering his chi points as quickly as she can, her knuckles fumbling a few hits. She pins him to the ground regardless, and he struggles and snarls beneath her. "Stay down," Asami growls. He refuses to stop, and Asami grabs his hair, pulling his head back up. She glances at his face, and freezes.

Even though it's been close to twelve years, he hasn't changed. Those eyes are just like she remembers, the same eyes that have haunted her nightmares for so very long. The same eyes, the same hair, the same stupid moustache, the same everything. Asami recoils in shock, moving away from the man and staring at him in disbelief and – fear?

Even though she has effortlessly fought her way through a building full of firebending triads, the sight of her parent's killer fills her with irrational terror, not at all like the fury she thought she would feel.

By the time she comes back to reality, the lightning is already flying at her face. She reels back, realising that it's too close to dodge. Asami's breath catches in her throat – and she watches as the lightning goes wide, passing her by and instead striking the wall behind her, leaving a deep, blackened scar.

The Lieutenant is upon her parent's murderer, mercilessly beating the man around the face with his fists. Asami watches, still languishing in the loosening grip of shock, as he draws back and electrifies his Kali sticks. The Lieutenant holds them to the man's chest, and the triad member lets out horrific, gargling screams that Asami knows she will never forget.

Ten seconds later, the Lieutenant steps off the smoking corpse, and looks over at Asami. "Looks like I did have to pull your ass out of the fire after all. We're nearly finished downstairs, just loading the benders into a van now."

Asami nods dumbly, and waves the Lieutenant off. As he disappears downstairs, she approaches the dead man before her, careful. Asami supposes she should feel something like satisfaction, or vindication, but instead there's the jarring absence of any real feeling whatsoever.

She crouches down, scrutinising the features frozen in excruciating horror, the two blackened marks where the Lieutenant had pressed his sticks into the man's chest.

Asami catches a whiff of something, and struggles to discern what it is. She leans in closer, and it's suddenly there. The stench of charred flesh, of death floods the room, and Asami feels bile rise in her throat. She tears her mask off and empties her stomach mere meters from her parent's killer, any idea of righteous vengeance crushed by the vivid reality of murder.


She returns to the base by herself, unable to sit in the Lieutenant's immediate area for any length of time. No one batted an eye when the Lieutenant said he'd saved Asami's life by killing her attacker; most actually approved of his quick thinking and decisive action. Their sheer disregard for human life chills Asami to the bone, the thought that men and women she had trained beside could be so heartless.

Asami had long imagined that some blood would inevitably be spilt during the revolution, but always in service of the greater good, to bring the world into a bright future. But any attempt to justify the murder, to stir up the old, comfortable feelings of us versus them, of the evils of bending oppression only pulls her back in front of that smoking corpse.

She stumbles into her room, slowly removing her uniform piece by piece, leaving a trail all the way to her bed. Asami sits, clad only in her underwear, and stares ahead blankly. Some time later, Asami tries to go to sleep, but her mind echoes with the terrifying thought that the revolution she has dedicated her life to will only result in more murder. She has no idea what to do – to stay with the Equalists and Amon, and become complicit in more murder, or leave. But.

There is nothing out there in the world that even faintly interests her, save for the thin, vain hope of making her father's company her own again, and building her own legacy. And even then, the prospects seem somewhat hollow.

She gets up, and begins to pace around her room, running her hands through her hair. But I can't stay here. I can't, she tells herself. There's nothing keeping me here. The man's dead, now. Isn't that justice? Isn't that what I wanted?

She finds herself sitting down at her tiny desk. A sheet of blank paper seems to beckon her, and she reaches out to it hesitantly, before grabbing it and beginning to write. She spends the next two hours writing, constantly looking back over her words and amending or crossing them out. By the end of it, she's exhausted, and collapses into bed, falling asleep with ease this time.

The next morning, she walks into Amon's study, silent and dressed in cheap, casual clothes. Amon is absent, most likely overseeing a training session somewhere else in the facility.

Asami glances around for a moment, before pulling the folded sheet of paper out of her pocket and dropping it on the table. She lets out a deep breath, and prays Amon will understand. After all, they know each other, and Asami trusts Amon.

She hopes he'll trust her.

"He'll understand," she murmurs to herself, over and over as she walks out of the office, and back towards her room. She pulls out a duffel bag, and begins to pack the few items of note in her room; sketchbooks and journals, a few outfits that she had picked up during the last year, and her own personal shock glove – but otherwise, no momentos. Nothing to tie her down, or make her feel guilty for what she's about to do.

Minutes later, she walks out of the Equalist base, bag slung over her shoulder, and rejoins the rest of the world.


She'd almost forgotten how bright camera flashes were. The paparazzi attack Asami from all sides as she strides out of the Future Industries building, towards a chauffeured satomobile. The meeting that took place mere minutes ago constantly replays through her mind, over and over.

The board of directors had hidden shock, disapproval – and a hint of fear behind easy, practiced smiles. But Asami can see right through them.

After all, she knows a performance when she sees one.

It's painfully obvious after several minutes of meaningless back-and-forth chatter that they mean to pawn her off to some high-level administration position, and leave her there to rot – they use sugary-sweet tones to deliver excuses like times of severe economic distress and unfortunate lack of experience. In all honesty, she knows she shouldn't have expected anything else.

Still, she means to wrest back control of her father's company. She wants to at least control something in her life, and then maybe she can use that control to make the world a little more just.

A little more equal.

Asami makes her points quite clear – that this is her father's company and soon it will be hers, and when it is there will be quite a few changes. The board tries not to appear too uncomfortable, but Asami can see right through them.

As the luxury satomobile wheels through the gates of the Sato – of her estate, she looks up at the massive house waiting for her on top of the hill. A faint dusting of snow lines the rooftop, and as Asami steps out of the car, she sees her breath mist away in front of her.

She knows that somewhere in that house, that room is waiting for her. But Asami knows that she is not nearly ready for it.

That night, she sleeps in the lounge, curled up in a seat and unwilling to even ascend the first flight of stairs. Across from her, light and heat crackle in the fireplace; one she'd only conceded to light after she began shivering.

She only enjoys what feels like a few moments of slumber before the image of her parent's charred corpses pulls her into lucidity again. She groans, and stumbines out of her chair, onto the floor, staring down at the richly coloured carpet.

Why? She asks herself, pleading. Why won't it stop? What will stop it?


An hour later, she drives into town, clad in heavy, worn clothes, makeup carefully applied to simulate a pockmarked, scarred complexion. Her hair is hidden under a tight, woollen cap, but it bulges slightly with the sheer volume of hair.

Asami keeps driving until she reaches what she remembers is the edge of Triple Threat territory, and then stops the car. She walks without direction, gloved hands stuffed in the pockets of her jacket. Around her, the city morphs into something seedier, rougher.

Asami almost doesn't notice the four-foot nothing girl until she nearly knocks her over. The girl turns, and Asami feels something like revulsion in the way the girl's made up, her face too young to be marred with that much makeup, to have her hips cocked like that.

"Cheer you up?" The girl offers, trying a sly smile. Asami doesn't return it.

"How old are you?" Asami asks, out of morbid curiosity.

"As young as you want me to be –" The girl cries out as an older, larger man, seizes her by her dark hair, and begins to drag her back.

"Stupid bitch," he hisses. "You trying to put me out of business?"

"But I did exactly what you said!" The girl pleads, paling as the man draws one hand back.

"Actually," Asami grunts, as she grasps the man's hand and twists it back behind him, "I think you're finished with her."

The man gasps in surprise, and then shouts, struggling out of her grasp. He takes an earthbending stance, his eyes furious. He lunges forward, sending a clump of rock towards Asami, who effortlessly sidesteps it. She puts him on the ground in seconds, her knee coming up into his jaw and sending him to the ground.

Suddenly, there's a sharp, stinging pain in her left thigh – Asami looks down to see the girl digging an ice dagger into her leg.

Waterbender, Asami realises. Why didn't I see –

"C'mon! Get him!" The tiny girl screeches.

As nearly every bender in the entire block descends upon her, Asami cracks a tiny smile.

At least the disguise worked.


An hour later, Asami stumbles out of her car, after coming to a stop by way of the now half-destroyed garage door, and onto the freezing driveway of the Sato mansion. She leaves a bloody trail as she limps into the house, the snow rapidly staining red. Every muscle in her body isn't just aching, it's on fire. Several cuts on her arm and leg continue to bleed, and the old, heavy jacket she wears is covered in burn marks. Her knuckles too are bleeding, momentos of a frighteningly narrow victory.

It's not enough, Asami realises, as she walks through the darkened foyer. Skill and strength against so much power. I just can't win.

They weren't afraid of me.

She moves into the lounge, now freezing, the fireplace extinguished. Asami collapses into the nearest chair, and closes her eyes, trying to ignore the mass of pain her body's become. Finally, she opens her eyes again, and looks up, above the fireplace. Her mother and father stare back at her through timeless watercolour, their faces young and jubilant. Asami focuses on the smiling face of Hiroshi Sato, letting out a shaking breath.

I failed you, Father. I can't even protect a single soul. Asami's face twists with grief and remorse, and she grinds her teeth in pain.

I tried to wait.

I've tried to endure this…hollow life.

I could leave it now, if I wanted. I could die in this chair.

But I can't. Not without knowing. What do I need? What do I use? How do I make them afraid?

Asami looks to her side, at the phone resting on the coffee table.

Your money can buy doctors, healers. They can be here in mere minutes. Another of your gifts to me, Father.

But I'd rather die than wait another hour.

I've already waited twelve years…

Twelve years since all sense left my life…

Without warning, it comes – a screeching, winged form crashes through the window to Asami's right. Her eyes, wide with surprise, follow it, watching as the wolfbat finally stops, perching on the mantle just below the portrait.

I've seen it before, Asami realises. It frightened me, as a girl…

Frightened me…

Amon's words echo through her mind. This symbol can do many things, Asami – it can inspire people, or put the fear of the almighty in them.

Asami's face hardens, and she stares at the wolfbat, watching as it stares back, screeching at her.

Yes, Father.