Republic City – 174 AG: Year of the Dog

"Good afternoon, gentlemen. First off, I'd like to thank this board for taking the time to hear my proposal."

Asami Sato peered hawk-like over the makeshift podium, long fingers shuffling through her papers. Her heart tripped with nerves, reading glasses perched idly on the end of her nose. She'd been waiting for this for five years. Five years of hard work, rejection and tears.

The crowd of Fire Nation masks stared blankly back at her, hats and pipes tilted at jaunty angles. She had despaired, initially, at her inability to get them to stay on straight. However, in hindsight, it had been a good thing. It gave her confidence. When she faced the museum board for real in a few short minutes, she'd recall her tiny basement office and the masks with odd bits and pieces stuck to them.

"I'm sure you've all heard of the legend of Atlantis," she continued, her voice echoing dimly around the small room, just audible over the throb of the boiler. "A continent somewhere beyond the Fire Nation that was home to an advanced civilisation…"

She knew her speech off by heart. She had the ancient Water Tribe wolf helmet ready and waiting, her maps and coordinates were up to date – she'd slaved over them for hours and hours, drawing and redrawing the South Pole, ensuring it was correct. She was almost ready. Almost. She just wanted to make sure she had absolutely everything in order.

"Why should we care about Atlantis, you may ask." She shuffled her notes to the side to reveal several homemade picture boards, propping them up to show to the made-believe crowd. "Well, around the time Ba Sing Se was being built, Atlantis had electricity," she flicked the first board down, showing a photo of Fire Nation hieroglyphs, "advanced medicine – even the power of flight. Impossible, you might say! But no! Not for them. Numerous ancient cultures from around the globe agreed that Atlantis," she presented a new picture, detailing Earth Kingdom sculptures of an Atlantian relic, "possessed a power source – more powerful than steam, than coal, even our modern day internal combustion engines."

Asami allowed herself a moment to breathe. Excitement was bubbling in her stomach, her hands shaking ever so slightly. Surely, when she presented her evidence to the museum board of directors, they would be begging her to go on an expedition.

"Gentlemen, I propose that we find Atlantis, find that power source and bring it back to the surface." She flicked to another photograph. "Now, this is a page from an illuminated Air Nation text that describes a book called the Shepherd's Journal; said to have been a first hand account of Atlantis, and its exact whereabouts."

She pushed her reading glasses higher up her nose, neatly piling her picture boards and shimmying past her podium to the pre-prepared blackboard. She eyed it for a fleeting moment, making sure the Water Tribe glyphs were correct before bending down to hoist a helmet up into the cradle of her arms. It was heavy – iron plated, beautifully wrought into the shape of a snarling wolf. She pressed her fingertips fondly into the curled muzzle, admiring the shapes carved into its forehead.

"Now, based on a centuries old translation of a Northern Water Tribe text, historians have believed that the Journal resides on the coast the North Pole. However, after comparing the text to the glyphs on this ceremonial Water Tribe wolf helmet, I found that one of the words had been mistranslated." She shifted the helm into the crook of her left arm, grasping blindly for a dusty cloth and a sick of chalk.

"By changing this word," she erased 'north' from the board, "and inserting the correct one, we find that the Shepherd's Journal – the key to Atlantis – lies not in the North Pole, gentlemen, but in the Sou–"

The shrill scream of the candlestick telephone broke her train of speech. Carefully, she placed the helmet back onto the floor, her heels clicking against the wooden floorboards towards the phone sat on her cluttered desk. She plucked up the receiver with all the relish of grabbing a poisonous spider, pressing her ear to the speaker.

"Cartography and Linguistics, Asami Sato speaking."

A muffled, disgruntled voice barked into her ear. She caught the words 'boiler', 'cold' and 'blasted heating'.

"Yes… of course. Just… just a sec."

She placed the phone carefully on the desk, picking her way carefully through the clutter towards the metal monstrosity, which took up at least half the cramped space. She supposed she should count herself lucky, she thought as she picked up a heavy wrench and stepped carefully over the Earth Kingdom badger-mole mask propped against A History of Fire Nation Scripture. She was a woman working in archaeology – or, more accurately – a woman working in the linguistics department of the biggest museum in Republic City. Perhaps the biggest in the whole of the United Republic. If it hadn't been for her late father's money, she was sure she wouldn't have even had an education.

Still, it felt pretty lousy that she was stuck in the basement, paying out of her own pocket for research she wished the museum would pay for. She twisted a couple knobs on the boiler and gave it a stern thwack with the wrench. It coughed, spluttered, and then roared to life.

She hurried back to the phone, tucking it into the crook of her shoulder and speaking quickly.

"Is that better? Yes? Have a good afternoon, sir."

She hung up, sighing. Despite how… forward thinking the city was, it was still difficult for women to be taken seriously in a so-called 'male field'.

The clock chimed four. It was time.

With the refined grace she'd been bred into, she picked up her papers and placed them into a black leather case. She took a slow breath, trying to calm her thundering heart and staring at a small shrine surrounding a black and white photograph.

Hiroshi Sato stood proud; his familiar brown leather gloves clasped over her six year old self's shoulders. Portly, kind, his dark eyes crinkled into a pleased smile, her father had died a broken man. Looking at the photo made it hard to believe that just a few short years after it had been taken, he would be half mad with heartbreak.

She placed the briefcase back on the ground, moving to the shrine and a small wooden chest. It was beautifully detailed – jasmine flowers carved into the oak, coiling up and around the edges of the lid. A deep, engrained sadness welled up inside her as she traced her fingertips over the box.

"Nearly there, Dad." She murmured, before flicking up the latch and opening the chest. Inside was a pair of soft leather gloves. The same gloves her father had worn in the photo. She pulled them on, smiling slightly at the way the too long fingers hung.

The whoosh of the mail chute took her by surprise. Frowning, she leaned over her desk, plucking the small message cache from within and flicking it open. Her eyes scanned the spidery writing, lips forming the words, reading it out to herself.

"Dear Miss Sato, this is to inform you that your meeting today has been moved up from four thirty pm to three thirty pm." Frowning, heart sinking, she glanced up at the clock, which read five past four. "What…?"

Another whoosh announced the arrival of more, inevitably, bad news. She grabbed it, ignoring the way her father's gloves slipped on her hands.

"Dear Miss Sato, due to your absence, the board has voted to reject your proposal. Have a nice weekend, Mr Tarrlok's office? They can't do this to me!"

Seething, she grabbed her suitcase and stormed up the stairs.

She could not let her father's death be in vein.