Summary: A specter is haunting the world - the specter of revolution. In the waning days of Aang's life, the world began to falter, seized by its internal contradictions. After his death, the world plunged further. All efforts to find the new Avatar failed. Some cling to hope, while others believe the saga of the Avatar has come to an end. 20 years after the death of Aang, the new Avatar works from the shadows to serve the light. Under the tutelage of the Red Lotus, Korra has taken up the mantle of revolution. She descends into the maelstrom that is Republic City, amid the game of chess between the bending elite and the Equalist vanguard.
Prologue: The Times They Are A Changin'
The city of Gaoling slept under the full moon. It was one of the shining jewels in the Earth Kingdom, growing rich with trade and the ongoing revolution of production. New factories, following the lead of Republic City, had filled the city's outskirts.
The paradox of this brave new world lay barely hidden under a gilded veneer. Wealth and poverty were not opposites, but two seemingly inseparable parts of the same tangle. The opulence of Gaoling's rulers created, and was created by, an army of the poor, downtrodden and destitute.
No man had grown richer than the provincial governor, the Right Honorable Ming Fu. He was neither of those qualities, but the privileges of his office had purchased for him the right to demand that others pretend that he was. Through a mixture of business acumen, patronage, and outright graft, Ming Fu had risen from the comparatively humble origins of an Earth Kingdom census taker to his present station.
The multitudes, many of them children, who worked for subsistence wages in his textile mills did not weigh heavily upon his mind as he slept. He slept alone tonight on his sprawling four post bed, wrapped in the embrace of exquisite silk sheets. His wife was out of town on business, but he had also grown bored of his current mistress, and had sent her away before retiring. He slept untroubled by the seething sea of chaos that was Gaoling, content that his guards, each a more practiced earthbender than even he was, would keep him above the turmoil.
Nevertheless, he awoke with a start, throwing the sheets aside. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, peering through the moonlit room for what had disturbed his sleep. The master bedroom, adorned with lacquered wooden wardrobes, elegant gilded couches, and floor to ceiling tapestries was silent and empty. Not even the curtains fluttering in the open window made a sound. "Is someone there?" he asked the darkness. "Cho, are you at the door? This had better be important; I have a very busy day tomorrow."
There was no answer. His age weathered face wrinkled with confusion. "Mind must be playing tricks on me," he concluded, scratching at his receding hairline.
Just as he was about to lay back down, a masked figure silently stepped out of the shadows, into the moonlight streaming through the open window. "Then you had best clear your schedule, Governor," said the figure.
Ming Fu's heart skipped a beat, changing gears into adrenaline fueled panic mode. "Guards!" he shouted.
"They won't come to save you," said the figure, her voice dripping with menace.
Ming Fu scrambled backwards across his bed as she advanced before tumbling off the far end. Growling in pain, he continued his panicked crab walk towards the night stand. "Get away from me!" he ordered. After a moment of shaking, his training returned to him. He remembered the Earth Kingdom Army drills, and his courage returned to him. In a fluid motion, he grasped a short sword tucked by his night stand, and stood to face the intruder.
The woman halted, just outside the reach of his blade. Her stance seemed open, so Ming seized the initiative. He lunged forward and slashed at her torso. With seeming inhuman speed, the woman stepped inside the arc of his blade, catching his wrist with an iron grip. Her other hand slipped past his guard, striking him in the chin.
The next thing he knew, he was sprawled out on the floor in front of the window, his whole body stinging with pain. She'd thrown his portly bulk across the room, he concluded, and the fear returned to him. As his vision focused, he saw the sword on the floor in front of him. At least he'd held onto the sword. He seized it, and sprang back to his feet with an agility that surprised even himself.
"Enough," the intruder commanded.
His body seized up, like a thousand hands grabbing him at once. He would have cried out in agony, such was the force that manipulated every thread of his muscles, but it so overpowered him he could scarcely breath or move his mouth. He felt himself lift off the ground as the woman advanced. "Blood…bending?" he managed to croak.
She got within inches of him. He finally got a good look at her. His assailant wore light armor of a pattern he'd never seen before. Unadorned by symbols, the dark gray clothing blended into shadows. The only bit of decoration was her mask. It was an oval, light gray on one side, dark gray on the other, adorned with stylized smoke clouds on the fringes. The woman removed her hood and mask, revealing piercing blue eyes amidst brown skin. Her oval face was framed by a bob of shoulder-length hair, dark brown, almost black. She couldn't have been much more than eighteen.
"What do you want from me?" said Ming.
"You've planted your roots wide and deep here, Governor," she said, almost spitting his title back at him, "so wide, in fact, that you've infested everyone's garden."
"I got where I am through hard work," he growled.
"Yes, you did work hard at exploiting and dominating the people entrusted to your care. You must be so proud of yourself."
It was her smile that was most unsettling. This bloodbender seemed to delight in verbally sparring with him. Unsporting of her, with that barely relaxed grip on his blood, flesh and sinew. "The ploughman cares not what the worms think," he retorted.
"Proverbs of the Mandate of Heaven, chapter four, verse sixteen."
"Ah, and educated malcontent then."
"Naturally. You've turned the art of domination into a science, a religion, here in the Earth Kingdom. But it's no different here than anywhere else in the world. It is just another form of the oldest intellectual exercise, the search for the superior justification for selfishness."
"A rebel against the world then. With that cosmopolitan focus, you can only be with the Red Lotus," he quickly concluded. "I didn't come to this showdown unarmed, invader."
"I will give you credit, you're sharp. But not sharp enough. Because stripped of your office, you're nothing more than a trumped up thug. You're a crook with a badge, and I have come to bring justice to you."
The fear crashed over him again, this time like a rogue wave, arriving swiftly and without warning to sink the ship of state. "I have money, just name your price."
His sword began to pry from his hand, pulled by an invisible and inexorable force. It tumbled through the air before floating above the woman's outstretched hand. "H-how is that possible?" he said.
She grasped the jeweled handle of the sword in her gloved hand. "The will of a thousand generations cannot be bought," she said, levelling the sword at his throat.
"But how? The Avatar was lost to us. Some even said the cycle had ended. It can't be."
"Denial now. How disappointing."
"Fine, my mistake! It's clear you still want something. Something not for yourself, you want me to change my ways, I understand that. You think me wicked and corrupt."
The sword nicked his skin, just enough to draw a small trickle of blood. "Vague promises under the threat of death; frankly, I don't believe you."
"Raising your blade to the sovereign is treason against Heaven itself," he muttered, almost like a litany. "You're the Avatar, you're supposed to embody the Mandate. Your last life came to bring peace!"
"I am not Aang, Governor. I do not come to bring peace. I bring a sword. I come to turn slaves against their masters, and to end the cycle of tyranny."
"Just tell me what you want!"
"There are three men hanging outside the walls of the city. Their bodies are left to rot as a vivid warning to all who pass. Their crime was simple. They forgot the Golden Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. So when they tried to organize the workers at the mills…your mills and the mills of your friends…they were taken from their homes in the small hours of the morning. Accused of crimes against the state, they were ramrodded through a court designed to deny justice and preserve the state. Then they were killed."
The Avatar paused for effect. He knew what the point was, but he wasn't going to acknowledge it and give her the satisfaction.
"I want you to bring them back to life. Still giving me the silent treatment huh? What is, that outside the purview of your vaunted office? Perhaps we should talk to Earth Queen herself, the Most Heavenly Potentate of Divinity should be able to undo a little bureaucratic slip up like that, right? Gosh, it's almost like this isn't a game and our actions have permanent consequences."
Her grip relaxed on the sword, and it pulled away from his neck. The blood bending grip relaxed slightly. "You asked me what I wanted. I will tell you, no more word games. I have come to teach humanity a lesson they will remember in their bones: the people are not the pawns of the great and powerful. Only through struggle will they win their freedom. You, Governor, are to be my object lesson."
The sword plunged into the side of his neck before slicing across his throat. The blood did not come except in a trickle, held back by the power of the Avatar's blood bending. He tried to scream out, to curse her, but the words died in his throat. Her grip was strong, like the weight of his sin, and he couldn't even move his lips against the force. The sword clattered on the floor, unstained by blood. Without a word, she replaced her mask and walked to the open window.
With a hint of remorse in her words, she looked over her shoulder and said, "Trust that this brings me no pleasure. But my duty to the world is greater than any one life, even my own. Multitudes have suffered and died under your boot. I cannot forget that. I cannot forgive that."
She jumped into the night. The weight of her blood bending released all at once, and a torrent of blood erupted from his neck. He collapsed instantaneously, losing consciousness as the life drained from him.
His guards recovered from the drugs just before dawn. Awaking in a stupor, they clumsily pulled little darts from their necks before stumbling upon the lifeless body of their master, slain in his bedchambers. His own sword lay next to his fallen body. They concluded he had tried and failed to fight off his attacker. Chasing their own tails, they began franticly searching for the assassin.
In a small port town some thirty miles down the valley from Gaoling, a young woman boarded a ferry bound for Republic City. Squeezing her large pack into the crowded steerage class cabin she shared with three others, the Avatar settled into bunk to sleep, fighting off the admonishing voice in her head. The real test still lay ahead.