Hello, and welcome to Korra Wanderings. I can't make any promises about what you'll find here except for snippets and vignettes about The Legend of Korra. Hope you like what you find.
-Wulf
Bonds
Lin Bei Fong's body healed long before her spirit did.
She knew that would be the case, of course, even as they flew away in the police blimp from the site of her worst personal defeat. Her wounds were superficial, bumps, bruises, and scrapes compared to what she had suffered inside.
It still stung inside as she prepared for what lie ahead.
The loss of her men—most of whom she had helped and taught.
Her resignation from the Metalbending Police before the Council; Tarrlok's almost unbearable smirk.
Turning her back on her mother's dream, the dream of the previous Avatar… dear, long-suffering, all-enduring Avatar Aang, a man who was as much a father to her as…
She clenched up her face, angrily denying any tear a chance to start.
But it is necessary, she thought to herself as she unhooked the cable assembly from the back of her armored uniform. I am not going to let those Equalists have—my—men—
Her eyes caught the badge on the armored breast of the uniform.
Her mother wore that badge.
She shook her head slightly, angrily. Her mother made that badge. Toph had made it what it was, she and the first of the Metalbending Police of Republic City. The first of the best. That was what she herself lived for, to preserve the legacy, to fight for what her mother believed in. What she believed in.
Because of that, Republic City now stood, tall, proud…
Vulnerable… shot through with corruption…
Now she was leaving the badge behind.
She sighed.
She smiled a moment later, though, a small, unpleasant smile. That badge had held her back from doing some things, too, things she couldn't do, hadn't done for love of the city, for love of the dream, for love of… him. She could do those things now.
She had been a little melodramatic in saying she would be going "outside the law", but after having upheld that law for so many years… she knew a few things. Now the gloves were off. She was no longer bound by any law, by any code.
Save one: she was going to get her men back.
She drew forth the cable leads from the back of the vest. Without the vest, the cable spools weighed considerably less.
Considerably less encumbering.
At the same time, without the law… without the right and wrong, without the structure… the armor, the badge could be as much exoskeleton as protection… what she stood for. The rule of order, the rule of law, which she was now setting aside because…
Because she had screwed up. Because she had missed the chance for a trap that Sato had laid, because she thought she could handle whatever came up, whatever could happen. And in her arrogance… now Tarrlok held the keys to her domain, through that gullible, bribable idiot, Saikhan.
Gone.
Lin didn't have much in the way of clothes—she didn't need them, really, since she rarely spent time out of her uniform, except at home—and, typically, she didn't spend that much time at home, either—but she did have some simple, nondescript clothing for when she wanted to go someplace unnoticed. That, now, was her uniform. And the cable system fit inside with few telltale bulges.
A shapeless hat… a loose jacket… some baggy pants… and now, no one would have any idea that the former Chief of Metalbending Police was around. No hard angles, no straight lines, very… formless.
Without rules.
Dressed, prepared, as ready as she would ever be, she left her apartment. She turned the tumblers inside the keyhole-less door with metalbending, stood there a moment, sighed, and left.
This part of her life, for now, had ended.