The Legend of Korra
The Strange Tale of Iban and the Republic
Prologue
Avatar Korra became Avatar at a time in history when The Realm had become politically and economically divided. Half the Realm had followed the example of the rich and powerful Dominion of Suihan becoming rich, capitalist, technological Western societies. The Dominion of Suihan, The Empire of Nipponia (formerly Kyoshi Island), the Southern Earth Kingdom Republics, The Kingdom of Dohan (Ba Sing Se) and its holdings and the former islands of the Air Nomads comprised the 'West' or 'Seiyu no Shakai'. The Republic, The Fire Nation and both Southern and Northern Water Tribes as well as the Northern Earth Kingdom not ruled from Ba Sing Se had held to old ways and became known as 'The East' or 'Toho no Shakai'.
Aang and Zuko had witnessed the political division and yet resisted much of the tidal wave of advances. The West rejected the pronouncements of the Avatar but feared his power. Unlike Sozin, who tried to kill Avatar Aang, the Western World chose to arm themselves lest anyone interfere with their ways. They viewed Aang as a historic relic but a powerful one but refused to budge in their 'progressive' ways. Had Aang had more perseverance or had Zuko challenged the political attitude of the Western nations; they might have healed the rift.
Both men had preoccupied themselves with creating the Republic and establishing a nation where all could live in harmony. Azula Kai considered this exercise in nation building as 'politically dangerous, naïve and futile' as she thought any nation had to have democratic institutions and traditions. The Republic did not. Suihan and Nipponia opposed the endeavor on the grounds that they already offered open and democratic societies for everyone and they accused Aang and Zuko of 'Fire Nation empire building and favoritism'. Dohan had swathes of its territory 'reassigned' to the Republic and although negotiations averted war, Dohan would never trust the Avatar again.
The founding of Republic City was followed a year later by the founding of The Uranus Project: the development of the atomic bomb by Suihan, Dohan and Nipponia. They signed the Three Nations Defense Alliance a year after the founding of Republic City. Ten years later after the greatest engineering project in history, they detonated the first atomic bomb on Whale Tail Island (Amori).
When the Avatar died, the world had become two Realms. The West had vaulted decades ahead of the East. With vast wealth and three quarters of the population of the planet under their influence, they had become the predominant power. Aang had died, living in a world where for the first time, a technological innovation had created boundaries he could not cross. He could smash the arsenals of the West but they had an arsenal capable of wiping out the planet and he dare not risk the awful factt hey could hide it well. They had drawn a line in the sand and he dare not cross it.
When Fire Lord Zuko passed on; Lady Mai remarked bitterly that 'Azula had won the War.' Azula had invented or helped perfect the means by which the West could ignore the rest of the world and had trumped the Avatar.
Azula had spanned the era of steam engines, atomic power and had even helped do her small part to land a man on the moon. She lived to see Aang pass away and lived into the age of Avatar Korra. She had become the symbol of her age, a figure whose influence could never be ignored and ironically, one of the first people Avatar Korra and Air Nomad Tenzin visited after they had quelled the Equalist rebellion.
I
Iban Kai hated the rain.
He hated the monsoon season in The Dominion which he imagined had become far worse due to global warming in the West.
"The news of the arrival of the Avatar has just shortened dad's life by ten years." Iban jabbed at the remote for the PVR. "How come you're not rushing around washing the drapes?"
"I'm in my mid eighties and have some perspective." Azula had aged somewhat but she still had a sharp mind and keen sarcasm. "Aang last visited the West sixty odd years ago and he told us not to make atomic bombs. I don't hold out much hope that this Avatar Korra will convince us to jump back seven decades and change, rejoin the Realm and abandon our prosperity. I also don't think anyone will be traveling in a typhoon."
"Doesn't she own a sky bison?" Iban Kai was in his late twenties, slim, medium height, piercing blue eyes and had the claim to fame of being the adopted son of Azula. He was the sole male heir to the throne of the Fire Nation because he was Zuko's son by an as yet unnamed Water Tribe mistress half the Fire Lord's age. "A magical ten ton flying furry air bending bison or did I watch that on the animated series based on his life?"
"Her air bending mentor Tenzin flies on a sky bison." Azula sat on the ottoman beside the couch and fished for the one remote among the half dozen that turned on the gas fire place. "The plan, according to the news channel, was to take the sky bison to the Fire Nation capitol. The Fire Lord arranged for a chartered plane to the West to take them to the capitol and from there, they will stay at the Republic Embassy." Azula looked at the dark skies out of the condominium window. "I don't think that will happen in the next few days."
"Why meet with us?" Iban found the hockey game he had searched for. "Will the Fire Nation finally proclaim me Fire Lord?"
Karo rushed into the room.
Azula found the remote and pressed the button to turn the fire place on.
"How can you two watch hockey?" He pleaded. "We're set to make history because we're meeting Avatar Korra. She suppressed the Equalist Rebellion you know."
"I bought the fifty five inch TV and the sports package because when I feel stressed and need to relax; I can watch burly hockey players beat each other up for money and trophies." Iban told his father. "Besides that, I don't think they'll be coming up to the thirty fourth floor of Affalia Towers to visit us. We don't have the kind of security to protect the Avatar and we live in a condominium in the capitol of the Dominion along with thirty million other apartment dwellers. I rate a landing on Mars by humans as more likely. Our time as a political family has passed so the Avatar will obligingly ignore us."
"Is that the rug from the front foyer?" Azula asked Karo. "You can't shove that in our washer! Why not sit down and watch hockey with your son?"
"You know I just cleaned the glass on the coffee table!" Karo admonished his son as he took a seat on the red velvet couch. "Who's playing?"
Air Nomad Tenzin had never visited the West. They had long forbid him and his kind from flying anything over their airspace and had the annoying kind of technology that could pick up, recognize and shoot down a sky bison. The West's military forces had a well deserved reputation for being trigger happy and blasting a sky bison out of the sky with two surface to air missiles without warning. They had tried once. As a young man in his twenties, Tenzin had flown a few clicks over the western Dohanese border near a military base located north of Geelong. Quick thinking and air bending mastery had save his bacon but he had discovered what his father Aang had long known. The nations of the West didn't mess around.
Aang had once instructed Tenzin that the West had found 'another way' to handle the problems of the Realm. Aang had not anticipated the power of technology to give power to the disenfranchised non bending nations. Tenzin knew Aang regretted that the Avatar had nothing to counter the astonishing material comfort and power of the West. He had left this life feeling an utter failure for winning the War but losing the World.
Tenzin wondered how many advanced spying devices watched him.
The West had reluctantly agreed to allow him, Avatar Korra and Lin Bei Fong to make a low key visit. Tenzin had to accept the terms that they would use a Western charter aircraft and crew and fly a fixed route from the Fire Nation capitol to the Dominion capitol.
'Not that the West spared any expense.' Tenzin thought to himself. The charter aircraft was a corporate jet with wide seats, a full kitchen and the steward that tended to their needs. Fine wooden veneers and ample legroom might not have made a poetic marketing slogan; but the two engined jet did provide every comfort.
Korra had tried to pull up a movie on the large screen television. The remote, the headsets and the basic operation of the airplane's theater system was basic. The Chinese language help system guided her through the operation and selection of movies but Korra grew bored of watching subtitled movies. She had learned some Suihan and had not enjoyed the lessons.
Lin Bei Fong had never visited the West. She had no illusions that the West offered any solutions to the growing list of the social ills in the Republic. Amon had vanished from Republic City along with his brother and their fate lingered as an unsolved mystery. 'Could they have wound up in the West?' The West had raised walls and divided the world in two and the West would not give up their psychological defenses nor would they give up their paranoia. Two blood benders could hide but would be unwelcome.
The steward stood and cleared his throat.
Tenzin found this rude and abrupt.
"Young miss?" The steward bowed briefly. "We've entered Suihan airspace and if you wish, we should be able to pick up local television." The steward spoke Chinese but had the red hair and face of someone from Suihan or Kyoshi Island.
"When will we reach our destination?" Tenzin asked.
"We should land in an hour although a typhoon is currently passing across the capitol region." The young man smiled pleasantly. "Don't worry though, we can divert to another airport."
Korra had little grasp of the Suihan language but the steward punched up a local Capitol Region news and information station and then showed her how to operate the remote.
"The Affilia River has reached the limits of the flood control barriers..." Tenzin could grasp the local language and Korra's headset leaked the news dialogue. Capitol News Network had a helicopter over the city, which in the rain looked like a field of orange lights although given that they were talking about a flooding river, that meant the dark snaking shape that ran along the flat landscape was the river.
Odapest had begun as a quaint village on the banks of the Affilia River hundreds of years ago. The name had meant 'Eight Fields'. The city lay on the southern coast of the island and begun to blossom into a major city when the Fire Nation controlled the Islands of the Dominion and found the low lying fields of the Affilia River perfect for a naval base. The city had grown during the War and become the capitol of the entire nation.
It had taken over from Ba Sing Se as the largest city in the World. Thirty million people lived on the delta of the Affilia River.
Tenzin looked out the small round window of the aircraft but saw nothing. He knew they were hurtling across the island at four hundred knots and at an altitude of seven kilometers. He didn't find this a marvelous thing. Mechanical heavier than air flight struck Tenzin as one of those unnatural acts like training a circus dog to walk on its back paws or ride a bicycle only that slamming into a cornfield at four hundred knots left no identifiable remains.
"When does this tube of death land?" Lin leaned over the aisle and asked Tenzin. Korra politely moved out of the way as she watched fast paced sports news. "I'm too scared to metal bend." Lin had no idea if she could bend the composite materials of the airframe but doubted she could. Even at that, she could sense the myriad metal hydraulic lines and wires running under her feet in the plastic airplane. "I feel like a kid in a fancy china shop with my parents who keep telling me to not touch things."
"Have you ever heard the crew tell us anything?" Tenzin sounded almost annoyed as he sensed the aircraft begin to slow down and descend. "The sky is overcast and I can't see the ground but I believe we're going to find out."
The Dominion had two hundred and ten million wet citizens crowded on their chain of islands connected by airlines and fast trains. When the aircraft descended below the cloud cover, Tenzin discovered what that looked like. The Republic could claim the population of the Dominion on ten times the land. Tenzin realized what so many people on so little land actually looked like as he saw the Dominion capitol lights stretch from horizon to horizon.
Korra took the headset off when the airplane decelerated under her seat. Rain fell in sideways sheets off the sides of the plane which meant the crew had decided to land in a typhoon.
Tenzin felt the ground rush up to reach him. A row of palm trees flapped in the winds as the plane crossed over the motorway on the edge of the runway. Take off had been just as unsettling but they had departed in partly cloudy weather in the late afternoon. Tenzin saw a row of lights first at a skewed angle and then level out. He knew he would be sick if he didn't have his air bending to provide him with his bearings.
Lin cursed when the landing gear touched the runway. She watched green and yellow lights flash by. Another aircraft waited on a taxiway and the bright lights of their aircraft caught it as it poised on the edge of their runway.
Korra heard a loud thumping that grew quieter and slower and finally stopped. She sensed the rain falling out of the night sky. The noise of the engines quieted down and the aircraft turned toward a huge building.
"I wish they would tell us something." Lin muttered impatiently. "I thought the Dominion had sunshine and palm tree lined avenues. I could have stayed home and enjoyed the rain."
"The Dominion welcomes our guests from the Republic." A message came over the public address system. "You will be met when we arrive at the terminal by two officials of your nation. The local time is 22:41. The weather is currently raining with wind out of the northwest gusting to fifty knots. The current temperature is 17 degrees centigrade. Welcome to the Dominion."
The speaker had a thick Suihan accent, rolling the wrong sounds and pausing over common words. Lin knew the speech had been cobbled together and rehearsed.
The plane stopped.
The steward stood in front of the group. "Your motorcade has arrived. If you will follow me."
If the Dominion had wished the trio to gape in amazement at the modernity of the airport, they picked the wrong night. The winds battered Tenzin as soon as he stepped out of the door of the plane. The bright lights shone from a concrete wall onto the black tarmac. The rain dimmed their light somewhat, but they still served to keep even the eagle eyes of Korra from seeing much in the gusting wind and rain except for the vague outlines of a huge building topped off with what looked like ten story tall three dimensional blue sails lit from below.
Lin walked off the airplane and recognized two members of her police force she had trained. "It doesn't appear they want us to see much." She bowed to the two men as she stood in front of them. "Dai and Xuai? I greet you on behalf of the Republic."
"In all honesty, we had not expected you to land." Dai was a husky man over two meters and he looked as imposing as a Samurai Lord in his gray metal uniform. "If truth be told, we had been led to expect that your flight would land at some unnamed military air base to the east. Our minders watch us very closely and do not tell us more than we need to know it before we need to know it."
"Indeed." Tenzin bowed to the two men. "We have minders?"
"Always Master Tenzin." Xuai answered back. Xuai had a tall but more slender build and Lin knew he had a Water Tribe father as betrayed by his blue eyes. "Even out here, they hear each word. I will take you to the motorcade. We are responsible for your safety and they are responsible for making certain we don't 'poison' their civilization with our culture."
"A very sad state of affairs." Tenzin sighed as he followed behind Lin and her two police officers down a long, brightly lit concrete corridor to a small parking lot some distance beneath the terminal. The parking lot could hold a dozen cars and had low concrete walls and bright halogen lights cast light on the vehicles parked there. Two black unmarked minivans with two Dominion officials stood at attention outside of each one and waited silently. The four men carried a gun and another device, a weapon colored bright yellow and black and made to look lethal. The wore black uniforms that had gold insignia on the chest and epaulettes – oddly unadorned for officials by Lin's Republic standards.
She heard a camera placed in open sight in one corner adjust its focus.
'Now would not be the time to test their reflexes:' Lin thought. Oddly enough, she heard Country and Western music. It emanated quietly from the walls of the concrete cave from hidden speakers. She had listened to broadcasts emanating out of the West on her radio: not impossible given the standards for AM radio were set at the end of the War and were the same everywhere. She had heard music, news and state broadcasters whose powerful transmitters carried their signal over the ionosphere. A few clever Republic City engineers at CabbageCo headquarters had even sought to try their hand at making a television to pick up signals from the West. Their twelve inch black and white receiver worked well enough despite using tubes and the company had high hopes for manufacturing televisions; but the West switched to another standard and the screen went dark.
One guard guided Korra and Tenzin into one van and then a second guard motioned Lin and the embassy guards into the second.
Korra could see out but the tinted windows kept her from seeing much detail.
'What are they hiding?' She muttered as Tenzin sat down next to her.
The van with Lin and sped off down the tunnel and Korra and Tenzin followed.
They emerged onto a merge lane onto a six lane motorway. Korra could see the distant blue sails of the terminal as the vans sped up to match the speed of the traffic.
Lin watched her minders but they said and did nothing. She watched the traffic which was heavy but moved quickly. A tanker truck passed on the right. She watched an assortment of colorful cars, buses with advertisements (most of them for bikinis) trucks and taxis rushed along. The order of it struck her as 'weird' but then again the West was all about order.
Tenzin fought back a growing sense of claustrophobia. Tall thirty or forty story tall buildings mixed with five to ten story blocks of flats and tightly packed smaller homes flashed past him. He saw the odd brightly colored retail strip mall or office tower. He saw a large church with a large cross illuminated from behind by amber lights. The featureless nature of the urban landscape gave him no sense of locale or having passed a unique neighborhood. He had to use signs posted before major overpasses as navigational markers and even they revealed little. They hung over the motorway and meant something to locals. The Dominion had made even them to the same plan: a dark green background, glow in the dark paint lit by some kind of light slung under the sign. The odd one actually had color and was self illuminated, had movements and displayed public service announcements. They warned motorists of the heavy rain and of the hazards of drinking and driving. 'Click it or ticket' were the words Tenzin saw on one sign hung over the roadway.
Korra couldn't help but stare out. She had watched the two minders in the front of the vehicle but they had a tinted glass window and she decided not to waste her time on watching their outlines. The buildings slowly grew taller, signs on them grew brighter and overpasses became numerous. Some ferried cars on and off the motorway, others handles sleek looking white trams. A sign hung over the tall trees marked one of the satellite campuses of a local university. Colored umbrellas moved across a foot bridge slung over the road on yellow ropes from two concrete towers linking the university to the other side of the road.
At one overpass, the two vans merged out of the traffic orderly speeding into the city and turned onto what became a four lane street lined by Ginkgo trees. The wind had eased as the large buildings around the street deflected it around and over the city. The two vans turned off the street a few minutes later and onto a stone cobbled lane and waited. They faced a large concrete gate that met flush with a cinder block wall. Lights shone down from above.
Lin knew earth bending when she saw it. The slab of concrete across the road facing them slid out of the way far faster than any motor could take it. The motorcade drove inside.
The Republic Embassy was an old summer house belonging to one of the cousins of Admiral Zhao. The family had been expelled after the War but the Republic had kept the land due to the efforts of Aang and Zuko who wished to have a portal onto the West. The house had three stories, a red tile roof with finials carved out of wood and covered in gold leaf, a large, broad porch and grounds outfitted with stone statues of dragons that faced the two vans. The drivers exited and the doors opened for the passengers. The driver motioned for them to exit.
Lin, the two guards, Korra and Tenzin walked out into the howling rain. The embassy sat in the middle of a small lot between two large fifty story or more apartment blocks and an old stone church faced them. The high wall blocked any view out on the street.
The drivers entered the vans and drove off. The wall rose back in place with a loud and satisfying crunch.
"We are all going to drown." Lin admitted.
"I'm Ambassador Kuiku Sabato of the Republic." A bald headed man in fine Fire Nation clothes slowly descended the stairs. "We must hurry inside before you all get soaked."
"I remember you served on the council for the Fire Nation." Tenzin bowed and then walked toward the man greeting him. "You left for your posting here."
"I thought they'd at least let you bring an umbrella." Kuiku apologetically shook his head. "I had left for what I considered a prime posting here." He motioned all of them to follow him and began climbing the stairs. "I had wanted to try to open channels to these people. I had hoped seven decades of hostility had ended but we have an embassy and they watch us."
The high doubled doors made of tropical hardwood opened as Kuiku passed through. "I will admit to finding sun and surf alluring but six years and six monsoons later, I have given up on enjoying all the West has to offer."
Two Fire Nation guards poised at the handles of the doors bowed as Korra walked past.
"As this is technically Republic Territory, our staff has done its best to make you all welcome." Kuichi addressed the trio. "Your luggage arrived at the back entrance just as you did. Expect everything to have been thoroughly searched the moment it left the plane. I hope you will meet with more success than I have - Avatar Korra."
Korra woke up the next morning to the sound of a city. She had grown accustomed to the quiet calm of Air Temple Island and had left her window open as she found the room far too warm.
For the first time, she looked on in shock at the forest of tall buildings with decadent colors of gold, gray and blue glass that surrounded the little lawns of the embassy. The sun had returned and even at seven in the morning, a dull roar came over the concrete fence. She looked up at blue squares of the sky and saw a multitude of aircraft buzzing and rumbling across the sky. She felt like she was witnessing the wakening of some huge animal as the business day began.
Still she had to fight the urge to explore the city. She had fallen into trouble when she first arrived in Republic City and she had come to expect hostile welcomes.
Kuichi had already begun his day with tea and dispatches from the embassy in Ba Sing Se. The problem with spies, he had learned long ago, came from the utter unreliability of their reports. Spies had reported subversive support from the West for the Equalists but offered no proof in the form of any documentation. He paced the meeting room. He had few uses for this room. It was ceremonial and draped in red fabric flags on the North wall. A large table with a map of the Avatar Realm rose out of the floor on a massive pedestal. Chairs that looked like the Fire Lord herself had purchased them circled the rectangular table. Each chair had velvet and just enough padding under the fabric to make meetings uncomfortable. The heavy wooden frames of the chairs meant leaning back would topple them over.
He placed the dispatches on the table as Tenzin entered the room.
"Good morning." Tenzin said without smiling. "Any news from Republic City?"
"A dispatch from the police report no sign of Amon and Tarrnok." Kuichi bowed to Tenzin. "I doubt if you will ever find them. No one has seen hide nor hair of them. If they entered the West, they will be returned on a ship in due time. If they crossed into Dohan, they would be interrogated and then driven back in a beat up bus." Kuichi nervously picked at his robes. "The growth of the Republic has taken place largely because Dohan runs a regular bus line into Republic City to drop off their benders. The West has many ways of beating us down and we can only hold our heads in pain."
"Refugees..." Tenzin knew this problem. Republic City was hip deep in them. The West had a huge country of nearly ten million square kilometers called the Republic to isolate the benders. Aang and Zuko had negotiated for the land and generations of benders found themselves living in a land where minus forty was a possible daytime high and minus fifty was common in winter. The sardonic Azula had comforted Zuko in a famous letter by informing him that the climate would forever protect The Republic from invasion. Tenzin knew the West had better ways to keep the Republic down. Refugees acted to constantly pull the Republic's economy down and created social problems that kept civic authorities busy.
Lin entered the room. "These people are savages. I spent an entire night with a large blue company sign shining in my window."
"Occidental Power and Light has such a sign." Kuichi said apologetically, "We have our pride and they have five story corporate logos on hundred story buildings. If it bothers you, we can assign you another room."
"Where is Korra?" Tenzin asked out loud. "If you'll excuse me, I'll check on her."
Iban Kai worked as a senior engineer for Occidental Power and Light. The utility provided electric power to the capitol region and nearby districts and took up the top twenty five floors of the office tower that bore their name. As they had tens of millions of customers, they were a corporate entity of some size and because Iban had been adopted by Azula, he came with a family name that meant a great deal in the circles of science.
On a Monday morning at eight in the morning after a typhoon, he had to check their grid for damage. The engineers working with him on the ninety second floor took in field reports from their network of gas, hydroelectric and nuclear facilities, readings from their vast network of substations, electrical vaults and distribution lines and discussed any repairs or replacements necessary.
"We have a few outages in the Bay area due to salt water in electrical vaults." Gionora told him. She worked as a field engineer and had been with the company almost five years. She was taller than him, had dark brown hair, brown eyes and wore her hair in a bun. "Repair crews expect to have power restored before noon."
Iban tapped his computer and three large screen monitors lit up as the screen saver program unloaded. "I didn't notice the power out in my neighborhood." He tapped his mouth with a mechanical pencil. "We had slated the area off Marina Road for a major upgrade in six months. I'll send in a report to the project management team and see if we can get going. Get your team's plans and information together."
Gionora watched Iban's fingers fly across his keyboard as he composed an email for the project manager.
A flicker of the LED lights and then the sudden flood of daylight announced the power had gone out within the building. Iban and Gionoro heard the fans slow down and then stop and felt the air grow stagnant.
Gionora looked up.
"Ninety two floors to the ground and if I had brought my car, seven more below the first floor to my parking space." Iban stared at his black screens. "Lucky my mother hasn't had a chance to swear at other drivers in a week and wanted to go shopping. They test my parents each year and they still are allowed to drive. I have to assume the tests are faulty as the motor vehicle department doesn't test manners." Iban's phone rang.
"Hello...Senior Engineer Iban Kai." He paused. "I know the power has gone out and since my computer has gone down, I have no explanation. Call the Fire Department to fetch those trapped in the elevator. The generators should kick in after a few moments unless someone siphoned off the fuel. If you have people who wish to leave, they can use the stairs."
Iban paused. "I'll get right on it." He hung up. "Our receptionist at the front desk wants to know what to do." He looked out the window. "She's on the seventy fifth floor and people are trapped in the lift."
"Siphoned off our fuel?" Gionara asked.
"At a buck a liter?" Iban drummed his fingers on his large desk. "You bet. We have fifty thousand liters of the highest grade biodiesel in the basement. Get a few barrels and a bolt cutter and make a killing selling it to someone with one of those sporty diesel sports cars."
With a whir and a hiss, the lights and power came back on.
"See?" Iban looked at the text flowing off his screen. "Now we'll have computer glitches for the next day."
Iban had to wear fish waders as he stepped out of the truck. The gray rubber waders made of a thick nylon and rubber combination kept him dry but gave him a wedgie. He looked at the man standing on the outside of another Occidental utility truck. The second man sat inside and had a phone to his ear as he tapped a tablet computer. He looked up at the sun spilling between the tall buildings and sweated in the thirty degree heat. He slammed the door of a utility van shut.
The linesman in similar waders looked frustrated. "We can't go down and repair the problem because the officer from Dominion Intelligence says we can't go down without their approval."
"Hello." A scary black man in a black uniform seemed to come out from behind a dark sedan without a noise.
"Hello." Iban had his smartphone in his hands. "Iban Kai, senior engineer from Occidental Power and Light. I understand someone is harassing our employees and so may I ask why our linesmen can't repair our equipment? We have thousands of people in two blocks who are blacked out. We may have to shell out money to buy the fire department beer after all the people they had to rescue from jammed elevators. If I don't get any answers, I'll call the police."
"The utility conduits run directly under the Republic Embassy." The man in black had a weak frown on his face which struck Iban as unnerving. He also had a large gun. "The vault your men need to access lies under the front lawn of that embassy."
Iban stood on a square metal slab embedded in the sidewalk. "The vault is twenty five meters below the lawn!"
"We have to ask their permission before beginning work." The man explained. "We think they may have sabotaged it."
"The Fire Nation built the tunnels we use!" Iban objected loudly. "May I talk to these people?
"These tunnels are a hundred years old and probably flooded like half the city!" Iban nodded apologetically to the linesmen. "We have customers to serve and we have shareholders whose pensions require a profit earning utility company to work." He turned to the spook as he had come to name the black man. "If we need permission then I'll ask for it."
"So far they have told us they need to conduct meetings." The man told Iban. "They claim we would use the opportunity to plant surveillance equipment. They think we have nothing better to do than spy on their communications."
Iban huffed in frustration. "You work for our spy agency. They have good reason to suspect you." Iban put his smartphone back in his vest and straightened out his name tag. "How did you find out about the power outage in the first place? The call out center has taken hundreds of calls reporting this outage and we came out to fix the problem because we operate a utility. The question I have is how you found out. I suspect you have more than a passing interest in our grid."
The spook turned away to listen to his headset. He must have come with other agents but they could have hidden in plain sight, parked behind dumpsters in an ally, the dark parts of parking garages or even in a location in an unnamed strip mall kilometers away.
Iban wanted to yell at the traffic honking at him but he represented his company. At least the traffic systems could operate as they drew power from another part of the grid.
"Ambassador Kuichi wants to speak with you." The man looked at Iban.
Iban took a moment to process this.
Iban looked at the linesmen and wore disbelief on his face. "Me? I design power plants."
The ominous man walked with Iban to the front gate of the embassy.
"Good luck." The man said ominously. "You must be royalty or something."
"What makes you say that?" Iban looked up the concrete wall and saw no door, just a cobbled driveway that ended at the base. His nerves made his stomach ache.
"The Republic never lets us visit." The man patted Iban's back and walked back a few paces.
Iban had never seen earth bending in his life and watched in numb amazement as the wall melted into the driveway.
"What do I do now?" Iban looked around.
"Walk forward." A man spoke from behind the wall in Chinese.
Iban walked slowly forward. "I haven't taken Chinese lessons in a decade. So don't shoot me in the head if I walk forward." Iban raised his hands. "I don't want to die because I screwed up a preposition. You did say 'forward' because I see only a wall."
The wall rushed up to its former height in the blink of an eye. Iban could hear the grinding of earth as it seemed to rise out of the ground. His mind could not explain how any hydraulic or electric system could move such a massive door so fast.
"We need to repair the electrical vault under these grounds." Iban stepped cautiously forward. "We have to restore power to the office blocks and apartments around here." Iban held up his employee badge housed in clear Lexan plastic. "I am Iban Kai engineer for Occidental Power and Light."
A man in an orange shirt stepped out from behind two large dark wooden doors.
Iban had not realized how alien and rather massively old the building housing the embassy was. He had passed it countless times, seen only the concrete out wall and the ivy growing up along it. He had no idea the three story mansion even existed. He had no idea that in the midst of the business district of the city, an old and quaint oriental garden stood inside the walls. The mansion looked Fire Nation. A few old houses still stood around the modern city and Iban recognized the style. The garden looked impeccable with neatly mowed lawn and delicate stone statues of dragons forming an honor guard along the cobbled driveway.
"I am Tenzin the Air Nomad." The man in orange and saffron walked down a set of stone steps. "I'm pleased to know you speak our language."
"I didn't do all that well since it was an elective. My mother insisted I learn Chinese, not wood shop." Iban regained his composure and remembered the reason he had come to this occult place. "I have to restore power to our customers so may I have your permission to work on the electrical vault below your embassy?" Iban almost could feel the prodding complaints of a thousand offices and the anger of hundreds of firms as they sent their workers home early having no power to allow their work to continue. Iban punched up the address on his smart phone. "As I understand it, you have no connections to our power grid so the work in the vault won't affect you in any way."
"I believe you will find your customers are very happy now." Tenzin stood next to Iban. "I know it is against the law to tamper with utilities but your people can kick me out of the country."
"Hold on." Iban held up the palm of his hand and showed him the screen of his slender silver phone. The images on the screen meant nothing to Tenzin.
Tenzin had expected rudeness from the adopted son of Azula. He waited patiently as Iban chatted over the phone.
Iban pressed the screen and hung up the phone.
"What's occurs to me, suddenly, is that no one is safe." Iban sternly began to rebuke Tenzin. "Have I found myself on the front lines in the opening shots of a war? Will earth benders sink the city while water benders flood it?"
"No." Tenzin stood as if at attention. "I had hoped to speak with you. As the son of fire Lord Zuko, you have royal blood in your veins."
Iban had never really believed this. He had the same perspective of someone who just happened to have had famous relatives. He accepted it as a fact about himself but he also had to earn his own way in the world. He had never visited the Fire Nation nor had he met Fire Lord Zuko. Unlike Zuko, Iban was much less the idealist and more the practical person. The interest shown by the Republic made him uneasy. Iban had heard of the political unrest in the Republic and like most in the West, decided to let them boil in their own oil.
"I'll admit I had not expected to see an anachronism." Iban told Tenzin. "You must be one of the few air nomads alive today."
"We have no plans to harm you." Tenizin paused. 'Suihan sarcasm and lack of tact?' Tenzin thought. Tenzin smiled because he had the task of ignoring sarcasm and didn't need to fight a verbal sparring match with Iban, "so if you'll indulge me, may we go inside and talk?"
Korra sat across from Iban. The meeting room table had the kinds of chairs not at all suited for sitting in for any length of time. Iban squirmed. Tenzin had hoped the meeting would show less of the overt mutual hostility between the two worlds.
Lin cleared her throat. "I'm Lin Bei Fong – Chief of Police in Republic City and Master Metal Bender; I had heard Zuko had a son by a Water Tribe mistress and now I have a chance to meet him. You don't look much like Zuko."
"I wouldn't know that of course." Iban fidgeted with his smart phone. "I never met him."
"The Republic and the remaining bending nations have all experienced social unrest." Tenzin explained. "The West has become less and less engaged with us and more obsessed with denying our very existence."
"I'm not a politician." Iban answered back. "When Aang and Zuko created the Republic. They created a nation 'where all nations could live in harmony'. They blundered badly. They carved up one nation to create the Republic. They thought the people of Ba Sing Se would happily concede a third of their lands. They created a threat to the other non bending nations who like us, feared for their security if a nation of benders should become an aggressive state. The West and Ba Sing Se and the Nipponese and other countries banded together to protect themselves against a threat."
"Do your people feel that strongly?" Tenzin asked Iban. "What about us? Each day I know you look down on us from the skies and have your fingers poised on a thousand buttons ready to rain death on us. You have assured us such actions will never betaken but do we have any guarantee you won't find your society ruled by a despot like Fire Lord Sozin?"
Korra found it a surprise that Tenzin could stand up to the sophisticated, well educated Iban Kai. His mother had earned a reputation for being what the Suihan people called a 'hard ass' but Iban looked like less of a threat because he had a kind face.
"I deal with civilian nuclear power." Iban tapped his phone nervously on the heavy desk. "We generate electricity, we don't bomb cities. None of our efforts have anything to do with the military use of atomic power that threatens you." Iban imagined that having atomic missiles aimed at your home would upset anyone but he couldn't figure out why the Republic wanted to talk to an engineer. He had only ever seen photographs of atomic bombs and missile systems. "A flamethrower and a car engine use the same materials to build and the same fuel to operate. I don't expect the mechanic at my dealer knows how to build a flamethrower. If you want to hire me to built an atomic weapon, you have made a laughable mistake."
"We don't want a bomb." Lin Bei Fong replied slowly. "We want more open relations to the West and so we think the best way is to start by meeting with your family as you have ties to the Fire Nation."
Iban breathed a sigh of relief. "I expect the worst in people."
"A Suihan trait, I'm afraid." Tenzin tented his fingers.
"I spent weeks fighting men who terrified the city." Korra stood up. "Aang died young for an Avatar. I think the state of this new world broke his heart. He had hoped he could forge ahead with Zuko and build a world of nations who lived in peace. When your people blew up the bomb, you dashed his hopes. You find that sad but naïve and blame Aang. You called both men blunderers. Aren't you being unfair?"
"We live in peace as a democracy as do most nations in the West." Iban felt his nerves act up. "My mother knew the old ways would never permit progress and without progress, civilization would grind to a halt. At the end of the War, we had two billion people in four nations. We now have seven billion souls on the planet, five billion living in the Western World or allied with it. The rest live in the Avatar Realm. We have to feed, house, provide services and water to our five billion people and bending won't do the trick. Azula knew only a technocratic state based on science could move forward. She helped invent the bomb because she felt it was safer to have the bomb in the hands of the wealthy emerging democratic states than in the old traditional nations."
"You know the number of people who can bend has declined sharply in seven decades." Tenzin briefed Iban. "You have no more than ten million and the numbers are declining sharply as is their overall power. This concerns us."
"Bending is alive and well in your lands." Iban responded. "My mother told me fire benders never numbered more than five percent of the population of the Fire Nation. She said if bending isn't expressed in the second year of life, even benders will never have power. My mother says in the Dominion, fire bending has almost died out. She did the math and plotted the decline. Given that the trait doesn't exist in 19 out of twenty people and is expressed only in 1 in 6 people who have the gene, no wonder its dying out."
"Indeed." Tenzin nodded. "I hope you will enjoy tea with us."
Tenzin had not yet learned to block out the noise of the city. Even at eleven in the evening, cars roared, horns honked and the grounds of the embassy was lit by streetlights and dozens of illuminated signs.
Unlike Republic City, the capitol of Suihan was reasonably safe.
For the first time that evening, sirens blared in the distance. Tenzin had spent entire evenings listening to the sirens sounding off in Republic City and realized how much they had become part of the background noise of that city.
Tenzin went to the window. He had left it open because even during the monsoon season, the heat and humidity made it a chore to sleep. He walked to the window and looked out. He couldn't rid himself of the feeling the city had made him very small. He saw Korra in the courtyard working on her air bending forms.
Lin paced the courtyard.
A few moments later, Tenzin had donned his clothes and stood beside Lin.
"I haven't gotten used to the heat." Lin answered an unspoken question. "They have stolen a march on us."
"What do you mean?" Tenzin stared out over the city and the tall buildings.
"This city has almost as many people as our entire country." Lin admitted. "I dedicated my life to bringing order and law to our city and yet we lurch from crisis to crisis. In the West, they have somehow made it possible for lots of people from all over the world to live together."
"Don't forget these people have done terrible things to gain their prosperity." Tenzin reminded Lin. "They have made an industry of mass destruction and created a lopsided balance of terror that holds us prisoner."
"Iban Kai...the next Fire Lord?" Lin had her doubts about Iban. Zuko had made it clear the throne of the Fire Lord would pass to his daughter. Lin thought the choice of a strong woman made sense. "Iban is the reason we came to the West. Isn't he?"
"Fire Lord Zuko made it clear his legitimate daughter would take his throne." Tenzin told Lin. "Iban Kai has no bending. He's the son of a Water Tribe woman. We came to learn and to start a dialogue with the West. Iban will prove of immense value in helping us open a dialogue with the West."
Korra walked toward Lin and Tenzin. "I can't believe this heat." Korra sat down on the bottom step. "Iban doesn't have a Fire Nation name does he?"
"Iban is one of several variants of the name 'John'." Tenzin explained. "Iohannes and Iohan are two others. Azula named him 'Iban Gustafus Kai'. Why do you ask?"
"I have to learn this language...I suppose." Korra wiped sweat off her brow. She had heard of Suihan as a language of a great nation and she had to master the basics as The Avatar or the Suihan speakers of the world would treat it as a snub, an insult as an affront to their status as the most advanced nation on the planet. An old Chinese tale told of the 'Chinese Room', a mythical tent that a supplicant submitted questions written down on paper they slipped through the bottom of the door of the tent. The tent would then issue a wise answer. Korra had heard this tale from Tenzin. Tenzin's daughter Jinora had studied Suihan and came up with the Suihan Room. This Suihan tent could do everything the Chinese Room could do: answer questions intelligently and so on. At least this was the claim but it came as a kit from one of those stores that sold meatballs and furniture. The Suihan tent came with assembly instructions written in accordance with all the rules of the Suihan language. No one had yet ever succeeded in putting the first tent peg in the ground. She told of the wise Guru Pathik of blessed memory had come close to understanding the first sentence of the assembly instructions but died of an aneurism from the effort.
Lin crossed her arms as she often found Tenzin's idealism frustrating. "Iban lives on the thirty fourth floor of a luxury condominium belonging to his parents on Marine Drive just south of downtown. He has lived a pampered life and knows nothing of our ways. The man strikes me as lacking the desire to be diplomatic and like most of his people, lacks the tolerance to dialogue seriously with any of us."
"He's not a politician or a diplomat," Tenzin said wryly, "and so he has no angle."
"Why all the interest in me?" Iban lay in bed with a restless mind. "No one mentioned taking over as the Fire Lord." Iban had qualifications that were of no use to any Fire Lord. His half sister now sat on the throne because his estranged father didn't want his illegitimate son involved. Iban didn't want the throne because making power plants was his calling. He had never expressed or been encouraged to have anything to do with his father and Azula had always called Zuko 'the dumb git' or the 'dumb idealistic foolish git' or on recent years: 'the dead git'.
Iban had always hoped his Fire Nation heritage would remain in his past. He had done nothing to acknowledge it: he had set foot on Fire Nation soil. He didn't want to become involved in the turgid, troubled political and social life of the Realm. He was almost thirty, he had a promising career.
He turned over in bed.
He heard a rap at the doors to the living room patio.
"Another damn bird." He muttered to himself.
He heard a second tap then a third.
He stomped out of bed in a long blue night gown. "I'm glad my parents are nearly deaf." He quietly stepped into the living room. The blue television splash screen meant someone – likely Karo – had turned off the cable box but not the TV. The maker's logo twirled in a dance and on the bottom right corner told Iban the time was five minutes past midnight.
The quiet tapping continued.
Iban turned the outside light on.
"Korra?" Iban unlocked the sliding door. "How did you find out where I lived?"
"How many Fire Nation heirs live in this city?" Korra stepped in the living room. "Our people have your address on file." Korra looked at the smooth, white modern lines of the condominium. A black baby grand piano stood in one corner of the living room, the finish shone even in the feeble light of the lamp above the television that hung over the fire place. "You have a nice place." Korra decided that compliment about the modern interior would go over better than white, sterile and boring.
"We're thirty four floors above the street!" He tried to keep his voice low. "How did you get up the side of the building?" Iban slid the door shut. "I mean without attracting attention and waking up half the building."
"Odapest is right at sea level." Korra whispered back. "If a water bender built a city in The Dominion, it would be this one. You have canals all over the place and I can go anywhere with a bit of bending."
"The city used to be a bit above sea level but it's sinking." Iban looked down and felt a bit informally dressed when he looked down at his navy terry cloth bathrobe. "If you had waited a couple of centuries, you might have walked right in. Anyhow...come in." Iban held the balcony door.
Korra walked in.
"Not you wouldn't attract attention." Iban muttered as he looked at the tall and youthful Korra. "You're a two meter eighteen year old Amazon from the Southern Water Tribe." Iban went into the kitchen. "Do you want some coffee?"
"Aren't you going to ask why I came here?"
"Shut the damn patio door!" Azula entered into the kitchen with a tired and cranky look on her face. "You're making the AC work too hard."
"Aren't you going to ask?" Iban rushed to the door and closed it and locked it.
"You've dated worse." Azula looked at Korra. "Another young idealist: that we do not need. Your people have probably discovered you're missing and our people are just now looking over the traffic cameras and have seen you racing down the Marine Road Canal on a surfboard made of ice."
"Or Bei Fong?" Iban looked out the to the veranda. "The chrome railings can take grappling hooks. The tempered glass can't." He unlocked the sliding door and looked at the little dark brown glass pebbles which kept the sun off the condominium. "I almost feel harassed."
"Your people have discovered you have gone missing." Azula told Korra. "I expect you or your embassy to replace that glass." Azula told Bei Fong sternly. "Why did your Avatar show up here at midnight?"
"I would like to know that too." Bei Fong asked Korra sternly.
"How do you expect me to be a diplomat if I know nothing about the people I'm talking to?" Korra explained and Iban blushed. "I thought I could take a look at the city but the police began to chase me. I remembered something about Iban telling me where he lived and I thought I could hide here until the heat dies down."
"Heat?" Iban asked carefully. "You were chased here!?"
"I left them behind." Korra assured Iban.
Iban didn't believe a word of this.
As if to punctuate his unease, a police helicopter throbbed its way between the condominium towers along the canal and shone its light inside the units. The dark blue helicopter hovered outside for a moment and then slowly moved south.
Azula had the calm demeanor of someone with eighty more years of experience. "Iban knows the tunnels under the city much better than the police."
"Mom?" Iban raised his voice.
"Get dressed because you can't go out in your nightgown." Azula half recommended and half commanded. "You can lead these two back to the embassy through the utility tunnels."
"Do you have to carry me?" Iban asked Korra as he took a long look ahead through the long corridor. He knew Korra could carry him since she had somehow climbed up halfway up a sixty story block of condominiums without scaring the daylights out of anyone living there.
"You couldn't keep us with us." Lin told Iban sternly. "Azula said you knew these tunnels."
He had to admit that they had him on that point. He couldn't run through the tunnels leaping off walls and dodging piping. He looked at his smart phone where he had stored a map of the tunnels for reference. "Keep going straight ahead."
"We're thirty meters under that river." Korra said.
Iban pointed ahead. "Keep moving."
The tunnels were damp and half flooded but Iban stayed dry because Korra used her bending like Moses parting the Red Sea. He looked back and saw tons of water collapse back into the tunnel as Korra and Lin passed by. He found the sight of the dirty water clinging to the walls more than unsettling.
"Keep moving." Lin recommended. "How far is it now?"
"Another eight clicks."
"I have already gone that far!" Korra complained. "How big is this city?"
Iban had seen satellite images countless times. He had no true idea of the extent compared to something these people could relate to. Buses ran a hundred kilometers along the coast in both directions from city hall. It took two hours to drive to the official limits of the Capitol Region, but then urban areas mixed with farmlands, forests, canals and so he had no real idea.
Iban found being carried by Korra. a petty humiliation. He had a mental map but so deep underground he only had the map file. No GPS or compass worked underground. The square concrete tunnel was wide enough to allow a group of workers to perform their duties and small fluorescent lights lit up the signs that showed the vaults that belonged to various utilities.
"Head to your left, down the next tunnel." Iban pointed.
"How can you be sure?" Lin asked urgently.
"When I took piano lessons," Iban urgently motioned to the left, "which is the black thing with 88 keys sitting in the corner of our living room with the lid up. My mom insisted on owning a baby grand piano to provide me with a proper musical upbringing and...you keep going along here."
"Didn't she want you to learn fire or water bending?" Korra asked as she rushed along the tunnel and deftly ducked wires and ducts.
"My parents loved music and I had talent." Iban squirmed a bit. "Anyhow I have perfect musical timing and pitch and we're at Bar 445 in...turn right at the next tunnel."
"We have a Fire Nation pianist?" Lin had a trace of contempt.
"At Rehearsal Mark F in the fourth movement," Iban watched the lights flash past, "we'll face a T intersection. We head left."
"You went to the home of their leading atomic scientist! Another one of the brash moves your famous for." Lin scolded as they made a quick turn through the intersection. "Even if you felt some need to talk to Iban, now their authorities will think we're trying to get information on the atomic bomb! We wanted to avoid talking directly to her because of this!" Lin noticed the tunnel began a slow incline toward the surface. "We should have explained that to you!"
The tunnel changed from concrete to aged brick.
"The next electrical vault on your right is the one under the embassy." Iban pointed ahead. "You'll see a gray metal door coming up. Don't use force! Turn the round handle to the right."
I I
Iban had slept rather will in the room appointed to him at the embassy. He woke up and looked out the broad window out on the garden. He could hear the city around him, imagine the traffic and yet he found the sight of the garden soothing.
He walked around the spartan room filled with wooden furniture in the Fire Nation style. Everything had either been stained a dark gray or had red fabric. A paper and wood privacy screen rested across one corner. Western civilization had spared him the worst of the Fire Nation aesthetic sensitivity. He explained this blandness as coming out of the need to clean up after quakes. Heavy wooden furniture didn't move much. He knew the bookcases, murals and television in his parents' apartment could brain a person.
He had already risen up through some fifty meters of crust at the hands of Korra. He had to deal with that. He had never seen such powerful bending. Azula and Karo could fire bend and he had seen his mother demonstrate her power in the local park using with clay pigeons as targets.
She could open up a half meter thick concrete slab and close it seamlessly. Lin bent metal. He designed heavy water nuclear plants with walls of reinforced concrete as thick as the electrical vault walls. He reminded himself to recommend no bender be allowed anywhere near a nuclear power plant if he ever got his old job back.
He had a shower but the water was cold. He walked around the room and looked inside the dresser. He had found Fire Nation clothes of the kind preferred by Azula and Fire Nation nobility in the days just after the War. This style of uniform had somehow become the standard uniform of all Dominion orchestra conductors and players although the color scheme was a black vest, light pink trim with silver accents and dark red loose fitting pants and shirt for players. The conductor and soloists wore gold trim. Iban had stumbled on yet another irony of history. Suihanese orchestras like their music were complex entities. The players dressed in clothing designed to be ornate and show forth their prestige.
Iban knew the uniform. In musical circles, it began as the uniform of the Musicians Guild in Suihan. The Fire Nation nobility had changed the silver to gold trim on the vest and collar but chose the style because the Suihanese had fantastic tailors and for a warring noble, wearing something akin to the clothes of musicians took the edge off their harshness. The Fire Nation nobles had uniforms with bigger boots which musicians didn't need.
Iban rounded up fresh clothes for the day and smelled them. He found they had a fresh smell. He felt them and they were of high quality and devoid of bugs or spying devices. His uniform had gold trim.
Suihan society had a guild system. They had guilds for every profession. Some professions wore badges, others like engineers, doctors and musicians had similar looking uniforms in different colors. The Guild of Lawyers had a uniform in black, silver and gray but similar to the uniform for the Musicians Guild. Iban viewed this as normal, much like wearing a tie to work. He had to dress the part to appear as a fashionable professional. Suihanese custom was Western but they loved medieval customs like guilds and having people wear clothes appropriate to their career made sense to them.
He could tell at a glance what a person did for a living.
He belonged to two guilds: The Engineering Guild and The Musicians Guild. Iban had Azula for a mother and Azula had him learn science to become an engineer. Karo tried to teach Iban to draw and Iban lacked the talent. He did play piano and keyboard very well and so had musical training. He had lessons as a conductor and composition. He had become one of the sought after conductors for amateur orchestras and church choirs in the city. 'They must have a complete file'. Iban thought as he checked his uniform. He set about braiding his blond hair.
He had inherited a social taboo from the depths of Suihanese culture. Tattoos were illegal, immoral and by many seen as 'gross and as insulting to God'. The Suihanese Bible told of believers being given numbers as tattoos in the end time to send them to gulags and of 'the Mark of the Beast' as a tattoo given to the allies of evil. Since no one knew what the mark looked like, no one wanted to take the risk of inadvertently letting Satan brand them as evil. No one wanted to go to Hell – gulag or Lucifer run. In the modern age, this wasn't literally believed but the prohibition persisted.
A tourists with a tattoo had to hide it or face jail for indecency. Any poor refugee with a tattoo had to leave or submit to having it removed if they wished to stay.
Iban believed this all good and just. Azula and Karo did as well. Tenzin would have much difficulty.
Iban found Tenzin quietly walking in the garden.
"You have conducted 'The Musiksekabet'." Tenzin's acute hearing could tell as Iban approached him. "A fine achievement for an amateur musician."
"I came to speak about leaving." Iban said sternly. "My God, I have no desire to remain here."
"We have contacted your people." Tenzin put his hand on a stone dragon. "They are sure you're not a traitor but they are paranoid because you have experience in nuclear engineering."
"Civilian nuclear power!" Iban rasped in frustration. "I've got no idea how to build a bomb of any kind."
"Your parents have some pull but if you return now, they will debrief you. They will probably hold you in prison for a week or more." Tenzin continued to explain.
"I wish to go." Iban looked at the wall. "They have no case."
"I must apologize for Korra's action." Tenzin bowed slowly. "We will let you go but we have already heard of their intentions. I believe to be fair to you, you needed to know." Tenzin shook his head. "You can stay here until your people come to their senses and take you back."
"I would lose my job. No firm in the Dominion will hire a nuclear engineer with a security blight on his record." Iban sighed and leaned against the stone dragon. "In any event, I would lose my job and my guild membership. My mother made me work hard for that job and I hope she'll be able to work hard to help me."
"You do have a musical talent." Tenzin put his arm around Iban. "I don't think you find much comfort in this."
"I need to explain just how Korra's work has nailed me to the wall. My parents have enough money to afford a good lawyer; if I'm accused of spying." Iban walked around in close circles. "I probably won't face any charges. Before you try to tell me that it's all good; realize that people prefer to see the worst in people. No company will hire me because they won't believe I haven't sold us out. They will think we planned all of this! Reason never prevails in public opinion. The very idea of your stone age people building the bomb is absurd. Your government couldn't afford the bomb and your scientists lack any fundamental understanding of the problem. For crying out loud! Your people can't make a car that isn't a technological joke." Iban threw up his hands. "Did you know I lived with my parents so I could save up money for a down payment on my own place? I wanted to buy a nice downtown condominium with a home theater room and a view of the Bay."
"I wish I could do something more to help." Tenzin crossed his arms. "We're trying our best to work with your people to solve this 'incident'.
"I wish to God you'd wear a hat!" Iban shot back. "No member of any civilized society ought to wear a tattoo."
"I tenzinan, metòt datte ikette?" Korra asked Iban as he sat in the large meeting room. "I've tried so hard to master Suihan. Why do I have to call Tenzin, the Tenzin?"
"You will have to admit he is 'the' rather than 'a' Tenzin. You don't want to give him the impression he's mass produced. You will find Suihan both elegant and precise but it takes some time to come to warm up to." Iban understood the sentence. "Well, Tenzin hasn't said anything remotely useful or comforting. The gates are closed, my people are using me as an excuse for an incident as they always do." Iban had grown up with Suihan. He had heard the complains of his mother but he worked in an office and Suihan had proven stunningly efficient as a system of written communication. Iban could write the core concept; 'electric' quickly as a single symbol. With a few extra strokes, he could finish the word with all its endings. An alphabet would require eight symbols, each with one to four strokes and took too long. On a computer, with a well tuned word processor, he could hit a hundred and twenty words a minute because of clever tricks. He could type 'ele' and that would draw the root. He had figured Suihan Hana made Suihan thirty percent faster to type than using an alphabet. Suihan's free word order meant more time save as Iban could type or write as the thought came and not reorder it to sound 'best'. Unlike texting in a language with an alphabet, a Suihan texter could hit lightning fast speeds and the recipient received a perfectly proper sentence. Such were not considered virtues in Korra's Realm.
"Your people will hold you in prison?" Korra said with concern. "I am sorry for visiting you. Will your parents be alright."
"My parents will have no problem." Iban tapped the table. "They are leading citizens and they are frail and old. I know they're worried. My problem is that my career is over. As I told Tenzin, even the hint of a crime in the past and no one will hire me as a nuclear engineer. At least not an engineer doing anything interesting. I'll end up inspecting bridges for rust or something equally boring."
"Kuichi has spent all morning talking with your people and so has Tenzin." Korra tried to sound comforting. "I offered to take the blame for acting rashly and offered to apologize."
"My people will search my office, my computer and my apartment." Iban put his arms on the massive table. "They will pick me up when I leave and hold me until they are sure I did nothing wrong. I don't want to be interrogated because I have no answers."
"In my Realm, a word from me or my mentors like Tenzin would suffice." Korra told Iban. "You have water tribe blood in your veins. We may possibly be related. I feel some loyalty to you."
"I was nine when my mother told me to 'quit watching cartoons'. I was watching Saturday morning cartoons." Iban smiled. "I turned off the TV and she told me the whole story. Strange thing was that I was annoyed because I was watching a good episode of the Tick. I had no emotions. I suppose this would mean more to a bender not a piano playing engineer."
"You have music." Korra assured Iban. "Tenzin has told me you're rather brilliant, perhaps more brilliant than as an engineer. The great thing for you is that people expect musicians to have rough histories."
Iban huffed.
Kuichi approached Iban with the look of someone with bad news.
"Your people claim you used your smart phone to steal your employer's data." The ambassador said quietly. "Do you have your smart phone."
Iban reached in his vest and took out the phone. "I always keep it with me." He pressed a few regions of the screen. As he expected, he had a few apps for music and movies, contact lists, emails from friends and family but nothing else. "I never keep work data on here for security reasons." Iban felt trapped and a panicked look crossed his face. "What do I do? If I leave, now not only is my career ruined, they have enough cause to hold me in prison until my trial. I could be innocent and still spend years in prison or out on bail under house arrest."
"Can you show them your phone?" Kuichi stood at the head of the table.
"To what end?" Iban slumped. "They will claim I deleted the files I gave over to you or I copied the data card or any other number of excuses." Iban stood up and faced Kuichi. "I apologize for the Iosiuva Mark V Tanks which will batter down your walls and demand my return."
"The tanks aren't coming." Lin stood facing the front entrance. "I don't think much is going on."
Iban stood beside her. "You can't block traffic with a police blockade and you can't crowd the airspace over the city without risking an accident. We're being watched from hidden places."
"We have good relations with the neutral countries." Lin told Iban in her less than comforting manner. "By neutral, I mean part of the Avatar Realm and you may not like the deserts of the Earth Kingdom."
"I'll take 'neutral' as a euphemism for Sand Bender or one of those oil rich kingdoms over there that still think selling their daughters is a handy way of getting temporary cash?" Iban trailed off. Oil had made the lands around the Seewong Desert rich and powerful because the desert floated on petroleum. It had not made them any more civilized. Most of the oil rich kings were little more than old tribal chieftains who sat on huge lakes of oil. They worshiped rocks and other deities and kept most of their people in abject poverty.
The global mapping app zoomed in on this part of the globe. Sand dominated the landscape. As the app zoomed in on Iban's screen, straight lines appeared which were oil pipelines heading west or south. A city made of mud bricks began to resolve into buildings and paved streets.
Iban tapped the screen and showed Lin the 'night view'. The desert 'blossomed' with oil and gas flares on oil rigs.
"Should I get my gas mask and buy a set of Sand Bender robes?"
"I hate to bring you bad news but the authorities searched your room." Kuichi stood beside Iban and Lin and looked at the odd sight on the screen. "What are we looking at?"
"Laser sights on my forehead? Now the police have my guitar and amp?" Iban sounded resigned to this. "Are my parents alright?"
"I don't know." Kuichi answered back.
Iban paced despairingly and looked at the cobbles. He couldn't imagine The Dominion arresting two senior citizens. If they had any common sense, they would leave his mother alone. Azula could still muster her fire bending powers in spite of her age and Iban knew she'd already be rather upset at what had happened to her son. Iban had in mind a scenario where Karo negotiated and tried to come to a rapport with the police while Azula picked of police officers around the condominium complex with well placed lightning strikes.
Iban walked around the gardens. He found out how the embassy generated power as he walked past a cluster of metal onion reel wind mills painted leaf green to hide them among the large ferns in the back of the large mansion. He heard a loud crack from the front and a large cloud of orange and pink dust rose up into the sky. Iban rushed to the front.
"I hereby request asylum in the Republic." Azula's voice cried out. Even in her old age, she was a presence. Even Lin remained wary but didn't make a move. "Well I request you guys keep our guys from arresting me and my husband. Is my son here?"
"Yes?" Iban shouted over the sound of the earth bending guards closing the gap in the wall Azula had blasted. "You have both gone mad?"
"The police think my son is a traitor." Azula dropped a hockey bag on the ground. "I told them no one I raised would be a traitor." Azula brushed off her uniform and adjusted her glasses. "Two police officers insisted on searching your room. They'll live but they'll be off work for a few weeks. Since attempting to kill cops and take their guns is illegal, we came here. Of course we had to fight our way past twenty uniformed cops in the lobby. This is also illegal. They had come with riot gear and a barrage of tear gas. Again, they'll live but those cops will have a few scars. We hit the tunnels and came up near here."
"Power's out downtown." Karo came out from behind Azula. "We thought a good old fashioned blackout would stop the police. At least the police will have their hands full stopping all the looters from stealing stuff out of cel phone stores."
"Now we're all nailed to the wall." Iban nodded.
The staff had no idea what to do. The guards at the front began to grow wary. Kuichi looked nervous because he had never had defectors before. He went inside to find the procedures manual. Lin had seen Azula blow through the wall. She thought it best to watch her with due diligence. Tenzin rushed out when he heard the loud crash.
"What!?" Azula looked at everyone with her amber eyes ablaze. "Well? I'll need a few billion dollars and an island you don't care about so I can test the bomb. You do want to have the bomb don't you?"
Korra had never met the young princess Azula. She met the old Azula who was the same age as Katara and was frighteningly smart. Not just clever – Korra had shown herself as clever. Not just a keen strategic mind – Korra was now an experienced soldier on the side of right. Azula was a genius on a level beyond anyone Korra had met.
Tenzin had to deal with her. Iban had told Tenzin that 'mom' wasn't beyond blowing helicopters out of the sky. Tenzin wanted to avoid trouble but Azula was livid.
Iban had not yet had lunch but he had his mind preoccupied with the distant lands of oil, gas and sand. Before the War, they had been humble nations ruled by their own kings and had emerged after the War with a huge market for oil. This didn't bother Iban: oil and gas production were respectable enough industries and he knew several petroleum engineers who made a grand living. Iban didn't want to live in places where selling people was legal and his Suihanese soul didn't want to live with people who worshiped rocks.
"You had the responsibility to mind Korra!" Azula shouted. She had spent much of her first hour shouting at Tenzin for allowing Korra to visit. Tenzin kept putting forward apologies.
Iban watched his father walk in the room. Karo had aged well and still had a lot of his hair although it had turned white. Karo joked that it proved the existence of God since it had to be a divine miracle that his hair hadn't simple all fallen out after he turned thirty given that he lived with Azula. He took his survival into his eighties as a sign God wanted him to remain on for some reason.
"Did you know this place has no TV?" Karo told his son.
Iban slid his phone to Karo. "The network still works here."
"Hello." Korra smiled at Karo. "I'm Korra."
"Ah the new Avatar...I knew the old Avatar." Karo smiled. "I never knew Aang that well but he was a fine man who died too young."
Korra turned through the pages of the large Atlas published by one of Suihan's finest academic publishers. The Dominion Geographic Atlas was a real book that stood half Iban's height. It was five years out of date, but Korra had begun to develop a headache from squinting at the smart phone screen.
She flipped through the pages looking for the maps of the Nipponese Empire. She couldn't read Suihan and so had to wait until Karo told her to stop flipping the huge pages.
"Here it is." Karo announced. "I visited Kyoshi Island," he pointed at one of the smaller islands in the archipelago, "as a young man seventy years ago." He pointed at a small village named Donatkao. "The Kyoshi Warriors train there. In Kyoshinese, they called their village Toyoma."
"Suki still lives in her home village." Korra added.
Suki had witnessed the vast changes that that formed the islands of Nipponia into one nation. In fact, Nipponia had not been an 'Empire' for five hundred years but the small islands that formed an arc from the Southern Air Temple to the Eastern Earth Kingdom had once been one nation. The visionary behind unification was Chief Sokka and the descendant of the old Emperors – Eborria of the Earth Kingdom. They formed a democratic state with Emperor Eborria as a figurehead and began to modernize into the second great Western Nation.
Suki now lived in one province of a vast nation and one that didn't speak Kyoshinese. Oddly enough, most of the Nipponese Islands spoke Eikan. The name Nipponia was a tribute to the founding Kyoshi Islanders (a name they had given the island chain). Kyoshi Island had become part of the larger archipelago by a matter of historical accident. They had once driven the Eikan speaking people out of their lands. Now they had become a small province in the middle of a vast nation.
Iban stood under the lintel of the open door and looked at Karo. "Nipponia?" Iban asked quietly. "I have to learn another language?"
Iban shrugged his shoulders and muttered: "idan, zeda, zedat, or idan, is it zenbat?" Unlike Karo, Iban had never visited Nipponia but he had seen instruction manuals for Nipponese built nuclear reactors written in it. As with many a Nipponese operating manual, it left much about the operation of a nuclear reactor to the imagination.
Azula knew Kyoshinese and Eikanese belonged to the same family of languages. Linguistics had advanced in the seven decades since the War. They had not yet discovered any method to make Kyoshinese or Eikanese any easier to learn. She had learned some Kyoshinese from Suki as it made interrogating the Kyoshi warriors easier if she had some command of that language. Azula discovered Kyoshinese had a plethora of honorifics and terms for porn genres as well as a grammar that made every literal translation of a sentence sound 'backwards'. The Kyoshinese had invented the Haiku and had made using personal pronouns a rude act.
She had developed some proficiency in the language but it sought to irritate her. She had once tried to form a sentence in Kyoshinese which began 'hachi nin no Kyoshi' and included 'okubyo na' and leafed through the small Kyoshinese to Chinese dictionary she had captured on one of the warriors. Then she roared in frustration: 'who the hell is the doing what in this sentence!' She had planned to express some profound threat but experienced an utter linguistic failure at the wrong moment. That wasn't to imply that she couldn't use Kyoshinese against the Kyoshi Warriors in an effort to seek to irritate and insult them. She had often spoken in a lisp, used crude words, mispronounced, used impolite forms or generally screwed up the language in any way possible. The Kyoshinese took this as a fatal insult and the irritation mangling the language of the Kyoshi Warriors gave her much pleasure.
Azula considered it a language that allowed you to speak politely using a long winded scripted culturally correct speech when requesting the services of a plumber. She preferred the Suihanese way: 'get the crap out of my damn drain.'