His beady little eyes had been fixated on the girl for some hours. He wanted her. No, he told himself, he needed her. But he knew he would never have her on his own, without the help of Him. And so he had to watch the child play next to the Republic City Spirit Wilds, to see when the time was right to strike.
The spirit knew he was just a lure, and that was what they called him, Lure. He feed on humans, like quite a few spirits, but in contrast to them he was to weak to kill them, even the really small ones. And so he waited for his targets to be alone - sometimes he had to wait for days on end, when he thought his strength would not suffice to bait the person back into the Spirit World.
This time however he was lucky. The girl had just waved to her friends and was walking down an alley on her own, and he moved to greet her.
"Meow." Lure looked like a small cat, he sounded like one, and if he had done everything right, he even smelled like dead rats and wet fur.
"Oh, a kitten", the girl cooed, clasping her hands together. She walked over to him, kneeling down, and started stroking his fur. He endured her activities with uttermost patience. "Where did you come from? Where is your family?"
He mewled pathetically and started to lick her gross dry hands. Lure hated human skin with all his might. It had an entirely different texture than the wet green membrane covering his body (at least, when he was not a cat).
Lure wriggled out of the girl's grasp and headed down the alley towards the glowing beam marking the entrance of the Spirit World. The child waved. He realized he needed a lot more persuasive power, and so he started limping and pretended to fall, mewling again.
"Oh you poor kitty, are you hurt", the girl gasped and followed him. That's when he started moving forwards again - she could not get to him, since now she would pick him up, maybe even take him home, and he would have a much harder time to lead her on.
"Kitty, wait", she yelled after him while she ran, "don't be afraid! I want to help you."
When Lure came to the crater that housed the portal he knew it would be hard. He stood on the brink and looked back to the girl. Then, just as if it was by accident, he slipped and rolled down into the crater, mewling helplessly. It worked, the girl climbed down behind him.
When she came close, he started limping away again. He got closer and closer to the portal. The girl caught up to him when the warm yellow light engulfed him, and together they travelled to the Spirit World.
"Oh kitty, what did you do", the girl yelled and stomped the ground angrily, "this is a dangerous place." She looked around, and he used the time to run away. "Come back! We need to get home!"
Lure tumbled and fell again, down the grassy hill into a dark cave. When the child would not follow him, he shrieked in pretended pain.
"Kitty", she questioned when she finally entered the cave, "come, kitty kitty kitty." The girl could feel His presents before she could see Him. She knew she was being watched. When the hair on her neck raised, she turned around and ran - right into Him.
"What a lovely face you have." These were the last words she ever heard.
Lure thought He was the best of acquaintances, because he only ate human faces, leaving the rest to him. He laid the body of the girl against the wall, the legs upwards, so that the blood would seep out of the wound on her head. Humans looked so much better with their faces ripped off. At least their skin was not so sickening dry then.
"Always a pleasure, Lure", He said, showing off his new face.
"The pleasure is mine, Koh", Lure answered with a plain face, not that he needed to, "it suits you."
"You know which face I'd like", Koh questioned, looking at the cave exit as if he was able to see the human in question, "the Avatar's."
Lure laughed. "You won't get her", he said, "I know the Avatar."
Korra walked down a deserted street, exhausted from her fight in some Earth Kingdom ring. A shadow passed behind her and she turned around, but was not able to see anything. After turning back, a small dog in front of her startled her. He barked, and the Avatar crouched down to pet him.
"Where did you come from, little cutie", she questioned and looked up some stairs next to them - there stood her dark manifestation, just staring down at her.
"What are you doing", Lure the puppy questioned his fellow spirit through clenched teeth, entirely sure Korra would only hear it as a dog's growling.
"You can see her, too", the Avatar questioned in awe, and Lure snarled, "If you can see her too, maybe I'm not going crazy."
"I told you I'll bring her to you! Go away! Just go", Lure screamed at the spirit, and this time she vanished. The puppy jumped up the stairs, trying to see if his acquaintance was really gone.
"How'd you do that", Korra asked, but of course, she was not able to understand him, even if he told her, so instead he opted to jump up the steps and bark at her. "You want me to follow you?"
Lure barked some more, then started running. He knew the Avatar well enough to know she would follow him.
"All right. Let's see what I find."
Korra and Lure ran quickly out of town, and soon they were arriving at the Foggy Swamp.
"Why did you bring me to the swamp", Korra stopped and looked at the trees and mud around her with a confused expression. She slid down the hill she was standing on and ran after the puppy into the forest, where he transformed back into his usual self - a green spirit covered by a translucent membrane, with leaves for ears and beady little eyes.
"Wait, I met you at the Tree of Time", the Avatar knew him, they had briefly talked half a year before, but he doubted she knew that he was only a bait for the bigger spirits. "You should have told me who you were."
Lure turned around with a blank face, like he was talking to Koh: "If I did, would you have followed me?"
"I get your point. But why did you bring me here? What am I gonna find in the swamp?"
The spirit turned back, and his face contorted into something evil, now that Korra could not see it: "Not a what, a who." He jumped and flew through some vines, greeting his spirit buddy who waited for him on the other side. "She's all yours!"
The dark spirit did not move, not even when Korra came rushing through the vines and landed in the water in front of her. She just looked down at her human counterpart, her mouth watering.
"You're just in my mind. You're not real", Korra yelled at her darker self, getting to her feet and fleeing.
That was the moment the spirit finally moved - and sent a powerful blast of fire at the Avatar, hitting her square in the chest, making her fly through the air, where she collided with a tree and collapsed into a puddle below.
Korra looked up and saw the spirit following her, so she sent wave after wave of water at what she thought was her mind's manifestation - but she dodged every single attack. The doppelganger attacked with fire, water and earth, tossing the Avatar around like a ragdoll, and finally Korra realized that she was no match for the spirit, and started retreating.
With some air jumps she climbed a big tree, gripping a vine tightly, hanging on for dear life. Out of her sight, on top of the branch, sat Lure, watching the fight closely. He did not want his diner to get away, so he started gnawing on the lianas Korra was hanging from.
The evil spirit on the bottom threw her chains up at Korra's leg, wrapping them around her tightly, and started pulling. The Avatar's screams where music to Lure's leaf ears.
He finally bit through the first vine; it snapped, and the Avatar almost fell, clinging onto another one with panic in her eyes. It was only seconds of Lure's biting and the dark spirit's pulling to make the second liana rip off, and the Avatar fell back into a puddle of what appeared to be some kind of metallic poison.
Lure dearly hoped that stuff would not make her taste weird, when he jumped from the branch and glided towards her. The last words Korra spoke before she was entirely covered where a panicked: "Help!"
"I don't know how she did it, but if the Avatar beat that dark spirit, she'll have a field day with lesser spirits like me", Lure finished his story about how he almost got to eat the Avatar.
"The thing with avatars is: you might not get them", Koh started, showing the face of a thoughtful old man, "but you can get their loved ones." He flipped through the faces until he stopped at Ummi - Avatar Kuruk's wife.
"When I saw her last, she was all alone", Lure answered with his head turning left and right alternatingly, "she had even left her polar bear dog behind."
Ummi's face grinned broadly: "You're out of the loop, Lure. Haven't you heard? She created the Spirit Portal for a girl. And then she lived here for some weeks with one. I bet that's her partner."
Lure took the time to transform back into his regular form, his membrane covered body wobbling while he spoke: "That's not how it works with humans. They need a man and a woman to produce little humans. Even the Avatar has to bow to these laws."
"Maybe it's not about creating little humans", Koh suggested with the face of the little girl he had just killed, "I get the feeling humans mate for fun."
The smaller spirit rolled his eyes at that: "How can that be fun? With their yukky skin and their slobbering mouths and these weird things they have dangling on the front of their bodies?"
The spider spirit raised his eyebrows, and changed faces until he looked like a raddled woman with way too much makeup.
"I'll tell you that, Lure", he started, "find the Avatar's partner, then you'll eat the finest meat this world and the Human World have to offer."
The universe seemed pleased with what Lure was doing, because when he exited the portal into the Human World, it sent Avatar Korra almost right next to the crater, talking to some weirdly clad humans with flashing boxes around their necks.
"Little Cutie", Korra called him when he got closer to investigate, and kneeled down to pet him. Lure hated that weird pet name she was calling him, and he hated the contact, but he tried to smile cutely at her.
"Avatar Korra", he cooed, "I was looking for you! I want to meet your partner!"
Evidently humans had the ability to change colors as well as some of the spirits, because Korra's cheeks went red when he said that, and she looked around to the other people.
"Partner", she echoed, waving to the crowd around her in a weird way, "I think someone was pulling your six cute little legs." Of course, the human had to touch Lure at that, actually pulling on one of his limbs (that was not even a leg, but a copulatory organ). "Wait a second, will ya?"
Korra straightened up and turned around, and told the men something that Lure did not understood entirely - it seemed to have something to do with some person named Sato who wanted to keep the Spirit Wilds as much intact as possible.
Then they aimed their boxes at her and tried to blind her and when that did not work, they retreated. Humans were so weird.
"Sorry about that", Korra mumbled when she turned back to Lure and crouched down, "you know, Asami and I are not officially out, yet."
"Asami", the spirit questioned, because who the heck might that be.
"Uhm… my partner", Korra answered and changed her face color to red again, "she was the one I took into the Spirit World."
"Oh", Lure said, and since the Avatar seemed to expect more than that, he added: "I didn't really catch her name, I just heard you created the portal for her and lived in our world with her."
"I think you might have misheard something", she answered with a laugh, but stood up and motioned for him to follow her, "but if you keep quiet about us, I'd love for you to meet her."
Lure had an almost evil grin when he started flying after the human.
He soon met that Asami person, and even got invited to stay at her and Avatar Korra's place, because evidently both women were big fans of the spirits in and around Republic City.
His beady little eyes fixated on one of the two women in the bed. He needed her. No, he told himself, he wanted her; he was still full from the girl he had eaten just some hours ago.
So Lure just sat on the foot of the mattress, waiting. He was quite sure that the Avatar's partner was wary of him, even though she seemed to be sleeping. He knew it because when they mashed their mouths together earlier she had eyed him suspiciously, then whispered something, which he was not able to make out, but they had stopped, Avatar Korra giving him the evil eye.
Since he was not stupid, Lure knew he had to play along for a while. It was a good thing he was sated, because it might be some days, maybe even weeks, until the two women relaxed around him.
But then, he knew, he would have the tasty Avatar. And maybe her partner as a side dish.