Amon had won. Vaatu had won.
*
Amon had succeeded in equalising the world, Vaatu had succeeded in corrupting it. Republic City as it was once called became renamed, it became known as New York. Various other localities had been stripped of their heritage over the years and renamed as more and more people forgot what they had lost.
*
Asami Sato, a brilliant young engineer and the daughter of Hiroshi Sato had been wondering through the streets of her home town, London. It was late afternoon and she found herself in an unfamiliar square. "Ba Sing Se Palace Square?" she pondered to herself before she looked around, the buildings here looked utterly ancient, other than that palace people came to see, that looked spotless and as if it had been built yesterday. Despite its attraction to tourists and despite her seeing it thousands of times from her father's personal plane, she had never actually been there and it looked so different from how it looked on the postcards or from the air. She looked around again and observed that nobody was taking any notice of what she was standing in front of. "hey!" she called out to a man with a red scarf
"what?" the man turned, irritated. He was going to be late for his night shift anyway so he didn't really need any further delays
"what do you think of this?" Asami pointed at the sign
"Ba Sing Se? Never heard of it" the man growled, "but there's a palace over there and it's called Buckingham Palace" he added
"Then why does it say Ba Sing Se Palace?"
"No idea, now excuse me, I've gotta go" he hurried off but Asami heard the man whisper "bloody tourists" to himself
"Jackass" Asami muttered to herself, wishing her crush was there to protect her
*
Asami wondered around the square a little and she saw a building on the edge of the square so she went up to it, the door was unlocked surprisingly and what was even more surprising was that the crowd had been completely ignoring it. She gently pushed on the door and it creaked open. Asami pulled her taser out of her pocket and armed it before she went through the door. She followed a path that gently sloped downward and eventually led into a tunnel where the only light came from some shards of crystal along the walls. "this is beautiful" she smiled before she felt chilly and had to put her coat on. Asami walked forwards cautiously and, after twenty minutes, she found herself in a big cavern. "Crossroads of Destiny" she read out loud to herself, there was a lot of damage to this cavern, shards of crystal were scattered all over the place and she saw damage that looked similar to that of an explosion. "what happened here?!" she muttered. There was further writing but it was badly worn, 'the crossr... ... Destiny, where Aa... And Azu..., along with her brot... Zuko fought for the fate of the Earth Kingdom', "what in the name of?" Asami breathed before she continued further into the cavern and into another tunnel, this one spiralling down. "this is obviously man made... But how?"
*
Asami then wondered into another, smaller cave where a large crystal was giving off a brighter glow than all the others, she could see that this crystal was the core of the entire crystalline structures she had seen throughout the caves and tunnels. As she got closer to it she began to be able to see more clearly through the blinding light. "oh my" she gasped when she saw the figure inside the crystal. She moved forward and slammed her hands on the crystal to try and get the person's attention but to no avail. "hello?" she called before she realised that the person was in some kind of suspended animation. "strange, this stuff looks ancient, and there's no cryonics kit here" she slammed her hand on to the smooth crystal again before she realised she had a pickaxe in her bag from her ice climbing adventure she had had a few weeks ago with her best friends, Opal, Jinora and Kyia. She took the pick out of her bag and hit it against the crystal. "damn" she breathed when it didn't even scratch the crystal before she pulled out her prototype portable phone. "c'mon c'mon" she breathed while she waited for the person to pick up
"hi?" Senna's voice came down the line
"Senna, it's me, Asami"
"Hi, Asami..." her smile could be heard in her voice
"where's Kyia?"
"she got grounded the other day"
"Oh so that's why she hasn't been replying to any of my messages!" Asami exclaimed, she had been worried about Kyia
"I'm afraid so... So why did you call?"
"I need my best friends' help"
"where are you? It sounds pretty echoey"
"I've found a cave! It's amazing!"
"Alright, Asami, alright, I'll tell Kyia you want her to call you back"
"thank you, Senna!" Asami exclaimed and hung up. She tapped in another number, hoping that Opal wasn't grounded by her rather strict but kind mother, Suyin.
"Asami!" Opal exclaimed
"Opal! You gotta come and see this I'm somewhere spectacular!"
"fineeeeee" Opal sighed, she had been playing a pong style game with Kuvira, "where are you?"
"Come to the square to the side of Buckingham Palace and you'll see a small sign on a wall of a building there, it says 'Ba Sing Se Palace Square" Asami was getting caught up in the moment, "open that door, it's unlocked and follow the tunnel then the crystals and call me if you get lost"
"Alright, Asami"
"is that Asami?!" a younger girl's voice called
"yes, Ora" she ended the phonecall, "she's found another pile of dog dung and jumped headfirst into it, again!"
"how exciting!" Jinora clapped her hands but rolled her eyes, for a genius, their friend spent most of her life doing dangerous or ridiculous things, "will Kyia be there?!"
"she didn't say, it's not just me she's been ignoring then?"
"Who cares, let's go!" after all, adventure beckoned
*
Jinora and Opal arrived at the square at exactly the same time Kyia did. "Soooo" Kyia breathed anxiously
"Kyia, we were worried!"
"Sorry, got grounded"
"Oh right" Opal muttered before she saw the sign that Asami had pointed out. "this way, girls!" she exclaimed and ran up to the door, looked around and opened it. She led the other two down the tunnel and into the catacombs
"Woah..." Jinora whispered before Opal grabbed her hand as well as Kyia's and dragged them through the tunnels to where Asami was waiting for them
"hey, girls" Asami whispered and pointed to the crystal that contained the person
The other girls' eyes widened. "what... Is that?"
"I have no idea... But girls, we found this person so we have to help"
"this'll take all night" Kyia groaned. She was the fittest and strongest of their little group and Asami was always amazed how she kept her muscles and figure up even though she didn't really do much
"Yup" Asami smiled and slammed her pick into the crystal, Kyia swung around and kicked it with all her strength, causing the smallest of cracks to appear.
*
Three hours later they were only a little further on in their efforts to smash the crystal. Kyia was taking a break and sitting down, Asami was by her side. The other two continued pounding on the crystal, trying to make the crack big enough to shatter the crystal. "Sams" Kyia whispered, "this ain't ever gonna work, we need heavy duty kit to crack this thing"
"My dad was working on a pulsed beam, uh... Laser I think he called out, before he died. He never finished it"
"well we need it"
"alright. Me and Ora will go and get it out of storage, then we'll see if it works"
"i think Kyia ought to go with you" Jinora called, covered in a light coat of sweat from her hard work
"But..."
"no, Asami, take Kyia"
"fine" Asami felt she had to put up a bit of a fight out of embarrassment
"c'mon then Sams" Kyia grabbed her hands and tugged her back out of the cavern.
"don't worry, we'll have set up camp by the time you two get back" Opal called, she and the others always kept a bag packed with clothes, tents and other essentials handy for if Asami or one of the others found a new adventure for them
*
"hey!" Asami exclaimed when Kyia pulled her again, she was excited at the challenge, breaking in to places for the fun of it was Kyia's thing.
"Come on, Asami!!"
"I'm coming!! Kyia, we need to talk about this"
"well don't stop we can talk on the way!"
"Kyia, I know breaking and entering is your thing but you've never targeted a place like Future Industries Tower before"
"Asami..." Kyia whispered
"just wanted you to know that this will be exceedingly difficult to do"
"Asami, it's your stuff really so we're not stealing"
"Try telling the board that" Asami huffed. Her father had left everything to her of course, but had left it in trust until she reached her twenty first birthday. She was seventeen, the same age as Opal, Jinora was sixteen and Kyia was eighteen. The legal age of adulthood was twenty one.
*
Kyia spent most of her time out, she had finished school and didn't bother applying to university unlike Asami and Opal, her parents noticed that she was always able to pay her rent for her reasonably nice apartment but hadn't been seen lifting a finger. Only Asami, Opal and Jinora knew the truth, she was a part time thief, preferring to steal ideas for a price instead of things. Things risked jail, ideas did not, although according to Kyia, her trade may well end up getting a little more difficult, there was talk of an introduction of new laws to protect ideas as well as property. Asami had remembered back to the first time Kyia had told them, they were sharing their deepest darkest secrets with each other when Kyia was fifteen, she, Jinora and Opal had already shared theirs, and Kyia was the last to go. "I'm not perfect" she had muttered, "but what I do I do to help people who really need it" Asami and the others were rapt in their attention, "I'm a thief" Jinora and Opal had gasped
"Makes sense" Asami whispered, conscious of Opal's parents a few doors down
"I don't take from the poor, I take from the rich, I take ideas from corporations. Asami, not all corporations are as fair minded as Future Industries, Cabbage Corp and Varrick Global, for example"
"Don't I know it"
"And i take ideas from those businesses and hand them over to smaller ones, I get a percentage of the initial profits" she had explained. "the contract is normally for something like ten months and I get twenty percent"
"Wow..."
"i go by the name The Blind Bandit. A name I read in a very old book I stumbled upon"
"but you're not blind?"
"no, but the people I'm in a contractual agreement with are, I don't allow them to see my face or body, and a good number of them probably don't even know I'm female"
*
Asami had smiled at the memory, not once had Kyia ever been caught. "we're here" she breathed.
"right." Asami took charge, "all the windows and doors are pressure sensitive as are the vast majority of other ways into the building. The only way that's not so protected is the roof, but... That's up there" she pointed. "all roof accesses are alarmed so the emergency exits and gantries are out"
"Sams, you worry too much. Give me the disarm code and I'll get in and shut everything down"
"fine, the code is four-four-seven-six-seven-four-four"
"Hiroshi?" Kyia giggled. "had I known it would be that easy I wouldn't have asked"
"Kyia..." Asami warned
"don't worry, Sams, it's safe with me, besides you could always recommend changing it"
"True"
*
Kyia gave her a quick peck on the cheek and bounded off through the undergrowth. She ran to a nearby willow tree and wrapped her hands up in the branches that hung down, she used the branches to pull herself on to the top of the tree and therefore avoiding the barbed and razor wire around the lower levels of the building, as well as being able to chuck herself on to one of the metal poles that reached up from the third storey to the top of the building. "spirits" Asami breathed while she watched Kyia make her way up the pole with little difficulty, understanding now why her friend and secret crush was so muscular
"thank the spirits for modern design" Kyia laughed and free fell for a few seconds on to the top of the gantry. She paused and hearing no alarm, she continued. One of the ventilation shafts opened and closed periodically, she threw herself through the grating just in time and she heard it click shut behind her. Kyia stayed still for a few seconds and allowed her eyes to adjust, once they had she moved forward again.
*
Outside, Asami was waiting patiently for the red light on the door to switch to green when she noticed several guards heading her way, she pulled herself further back into the undergrowth but still sighed deeply once they had passed. The light had also gone green so she sprinted up to the door and threw it open as fast as she could
Inside the building she found Kyia waiting there for her, she had a few bruises on her arms and knees but that was it. "i let myself fall down a shaft instead of risking walking down the stairs" she explained. Kyia and Asami made their way to the warehouse and, thanks to Asami's intimate knowledge of the sorting system, they soon found the thing they were looking for. "let me take it" Kyia whispered before she threw the box on her back using the handy backpack straps on the heavy box, "Hiroshi really thought of everything didn't he?" She indicated the straps on the box that allowed her to carry it as if it was a backpack. Asami nodded, smiling and led the way back up into the tower then back out the door, not forgetting to reset all the alarm systems on her way out
"We got it!" Asami grinned happily
"yes, we got it!"
"gonna be alright taking that thing back to the Satomobile?"
"yes it's heavy but I can manage" Kyia grunted, she was right though, she managed to carry it to Asami's Satomobile and plonked it on the back seat.
"Let's scarper" Asami grinned, she jumped in the vehicle with Kyia in the passenger seat and drove off into the night