Hey guys, I'm back with a new chapter. Let's get it on with it:

Lucy sat with her legs propped up on a table as she read the morning newspaper. She was in an outdoor dining pavilion on Air Temple Island. The paper was boring, just more of the same thing that had been happening over the past couple of weeks. Vines disrupted the city infrastructure, approval ratings of both the President and the Avatar were in the toilet, and public outcry still demanded the head of the one that had become known as the 'Demon of Republic City'.

It was the last part that infuriated the young plasma user to no end. The actual 'demon' had been Matthew Cross, a young man with dark energy manipulation abilities and a severely unstable mind set. Cross had fused with Vaatu, the Spirit of Darkness and Chaos, and had attacked Republic City with the intent of wiping it and the millions of people who called it home from existence. Only through the combined effort of herself, her brother Alex, and Avatar Korra had Cross been able to be stopped.

Almost immediately afterward, the newspapers in their fever pitch need to find someone to blame had pinned fault of the attack all on Alex. Since there was virtually nothing left of Cross' body after the battle, and no records of him existed, this shift of blame proved to be much easier then anyone would have thought.

It didn't help that Alex wasn't around to defend himself, either. In a fit of blind rage, he'd packed up his few belongings and stormed out of Republic City. Personally, Lucy thought that her brother was being childish. The entire stunt to her was little more then a teenager stomping off to their room when they didn't get their way. Of course, she'd tried to explain this to Korra and Asami. Neither of the young women seemed to care however.

Korra was too stubborn for her own good. She'd have this little spat last until the end of time if it meant she could get Alex to admit he was wrong and apologize. But Lucy knew her little brother, and knew him well. This would last months if not years if some kind of outside intervention wasn't used. First chance she got, she would resolve to get the two to either sit down and talk, or just beat each other to death. The latter of the two outcomes was more likely, given the two's previous history.

Asami, on the other hand, was a different story. Her anger with Alex was deeper, and simmered like a red hot coal waiting for fuel to be dumped on it. Lucy had used her natural charm, and half a bottle of sake in order to coax out what she was upset about. From what she had been able to gather, it seemed that Alex had blown his second chance with the heiress by running off like that. If he was so willing to run off over something so trivial, Asami was sure that he wasn't worth her time. Given that, Lucy wasn't about to touch that hornet's nest with a ten foot pole. It was easier just to watch the whole situation blow up in her brother's face from a distance. With popcorn, every good show wasn't complete without popcorn.

"Are you Lucy?" came a timid voice. Lucy didn't even bother to look away from her paper.

"Piss off," she said.

"Lucy," this voice was far more stern, causing the plasma caster to glance up from her reading material. Asami was standing there with her hands on her hips, while a young man stood next to her with his arms hugged to his side.

"Who's the kid?" she asked.

"This is Shun. He's gonna need our help," Asami said. Lucy cocked her eyebrow at the heiress, who promptly gave a hard tap onto Shun's back. The young man slowly raised a hand, and Lucy's newspaper burst into flames. She quickly dropped the flaming paper and slid back a little in surprise. Then, her eyes flashed with anger before pointing her index finger at Shun. The air in front of the young man's face exploded, sending him flying backwards across the pavilion and shattering a table in the process. Asami glared at Lucy and folded her arms.

"It's time, isn't it?" she asked with a sigh, ignoring the glare she was receiving. Asami didn't answer, but rather gave a single nod. Lucy pursed her lips before she got to her feet and turned her attention to the newcomer fully, who was bruised but otherwise alright. Yet another side effect of Alex running off, she was the only one besides Asami who could teach the new Charged how to use their powers.

"Alright, kid, listen up. My name is Lucy Chambers, and by the time the sun sets today you're gonna hate my guts."

Near Full Moon Bay, Earth Kingdom.

Thunder rumbled in the gray overcast as a light rain fell upon the railroad tracks. Yalishanda Shi, or Yali as she was known to her closer friends, looked at the view before her with a studying eye. This particular set of tracks ran along the bank of the Eastern Lake, and served as a main line connecting the eastern and western halves of the country.

Which was why she was watching her small band of rebels strap explosives to the rails. They were going to blow it and the next military train that came along into the lake, and by doing so disrupt Earth Kingdom military supply routes for several months. The hope was that this attack would be coordinated with sandbenders further south, as well as rebel units in the Northern Mountains. Resulting in a breakdown of transportation nation wide.

Yali and her people had just barely managed to escape destruction in the mountains along the boarder with the Untied Republic. They'd been working their way east, mainly skirting the edge of the desert in an effort to try and throw off anyone that was coming after them. Now that they were this close to the other major rebel units in the country, 'The Colonel' as her underlings so affectionately called her, had decided to go back on the offensive. She had received orders from the overall commander of the rebellion, Jason Orou, to set explosives along this set of track and then push southeast into the desert to link up with other units.

Her efforts to communicate and coordinate with the other rebel cells gave Yali hope. About a year ago, this whole thing had been nothing more then a few nomadic tribes declaring war against the Earth Kingdom government. Now, it was a full on rebellion that was rapidly growing into a civil war. The people were tired of Hou-Ting, a woman so enthralled with herself she couldn't be bothered to update the country's infrastructure, much less tend to the worries of the people. Now, they were standing up and telling her just what they thought of her and her little monarchy.

Blowing up railroads and trains wasn't the only reason she was in the area. Yali's orders from Jason had contained a second directive addressed to her directly. After the bombs went off, she was to locate an agent sent by Jason and help him enter Ba Sing Se. Although the identity of the agent had been left out of the orders, there had been a reassurance that she would know him when she saw him.

"Colonel, I think we found the guy you're looking for," one of her scouts said as he came to a halt in front of her, giving her a quick salute as he struggled to regain his breath.

"How are you sure of this?" she asked. There were several villages and towns in the area. Locating one man in the middle of all that was like finding a needle in a haystack. A little doubt was warranted on her part.

"He was sitting in a bar in a town about two miles up the tracks from here. He had some kind of hand held mirror that played music," the scout said, pointing back up the railroad in the direction he had come from. Yali frowned at the description. It had certainly narrowed down the possibilities of who the agent could be, and she was hoping she was wrong.

"Rai, I'm heading into town. As soon as you're done here head to the rally point and I'll join you later," she said. The young man in question gave her a quick two finger salute as she set off, following the scout back to the location he had been telling her about.

It didn't take long to get to the town, although calling it that would have been a little generous. The whole place was basically a glorified crossroads, a place where the railroad, actual road, and lake ferry all met. There was a telegraph office combined with a train station, a small general store combined with a filling station, a bar and hotel with were one in the same, a few houses and nothing else.

Shi didn't bother reading the name of the town on the sign that hung from the train station. It wasn't like she would be here long enough for it to matter either way. Her job was to supply this guy a way into Ba Sing Se and nothing else, so that was what she intended to do. The scout led the way into the bar and hotel before pointing off toward a corner in the back.

"He's over there," he said. Yali followed where he was pointing and was able to make out the form of a young man sitting at a table with his feet propped up on another chair. His back was to the corner, so no one could sneak up on him, and his head was hunched low like he was trying to sleep.

"Good job, rejoin the others," she said in a low voice to him. The scout gave a quick nod before hurrying off, leaving her alone to face whomever this was alone. As she crossed the barroom to the young man, she began to notice more and more of the little details. There were several bottles sitting on the table next to him, some of them beer, and some of them containing something much, much stronger.

This, combined with the ash tray that was full with cigarillo buds and ash indicated that the person had been sitting here for quite a long time and had long ago made himself at home. Then there was the music. At first, Yali had thought the owners had some kind of speaker system hooked up, but the closer she got the more it dawned on her that the music coming from him. It was strange sounding, not at all like the jazz and swing that was currently popular, or even like the more traditional music played in decades past.

'No one gets out alive, every day is do or die.'

'The one thing you leave behind is; How Did You Love?'

'How Did You Love?'

'It's not what you believe, those prayers will make you bleed.'

'But while you're on your knees; How Did You Love?'

'How Did You Love?'

As she drew closer, Yali realized that the young man was singing along to the music, although his words were slurred given how drunk he appeared to be. What's worse was that she realized that she recognized the young man before her, and he was not very high on her approval list.

"Alex Chambers, my oh my how the high have fallen," she said as she stopped and folded her arms. Alex stopped his drunken singing and looked up at her. He watched her through squinted eyes, before they suddenly went wide and a massive smile broke onto his face.

"Yali!" he yelled in delight as he went to stand and give her a bear hug. This instantly went sideways as he lost his balance and sat back down into his chair. She just folded her arms as she regarded him with annoyance.

"I may have had a little to drink," he said, holding his thumb and index finger close together.

"A little, huh," she deadpanned as she regarded the table before them both.

"I had a 'hic' drinking partner, but he ran off," he defended.

"Uh huh."

"It's true, I swear it. Speaking of true things, I need your help getting into the Capital," Alex said, pointing in the general direction that Ba Sing Se was in. Yali couldn't help but snort at that.

"Getting to the Capital? You need my help just getting to the bathroom without falling down," she said. Alex went to defend himself, but hiccuped again and promptly forgot all about it. Picking the electric user up and slinging his arm across her shoulders, she began to guide him out of the bar. Although she had no idea where to take the drunken idiot, she knew that staying in strange bar wasn't the best plan.

"Did you know you're very pretty? You are, if I do say so myself," Alex said with another hiccup. She would have elbowed him in the ribs, but refrained from doing so due to the fact that he wouldn't have felt it. On a more personal note, she might have taken the complement, if things had been different.

She was tall and lean thanks to a combination of her line of work and sometimes having to go a day or two without food. Her skin was a light tone, and her hair was a light copper brown color which was wild and unkempt, yet stopped at her ears. Her eyes, like Alex's, were a storm gray color. She was considered attractive by many, but due to her line of work and lively hood she rarely had time for the romance department.

Outside, Yali took notice of a pair of men in Earth Kingdom uniforms stopping and questioning people passing them by on the street. One of them was holding up a wanted poster, and though she couldn't see what was on it, it was better to be safe then sorry. Turning them, she began to walk them away from the soldiers at a brisk pace.

"Hey, you two, stop!" The young rebel almost shouted in frustration at her luck.

"Is there a problem ossifers?" Alex asked, whipping them both around and slurring his words. His grip on her shoulder tightened, though, a move which only she would have noticed. It gave her pause and made her wonder if her new companion was really as drunk as he was making out to be.

"There's been reports of rebel activity in the area. What is your twos business here?" one of the soldiers asked.

"My sister here was just taking me home. I had a little too much to drink.," Alex answered.

"Sir, it's barely even noon, and you're already drunk?" the other soldier asked.

"I work night shift down in the mines, it's technically 'hic' my midnight." For a moment, it didn't look like the soldiers were buying it, and Yali's body instinctively began to tense in anticipation of a fight.

"Make sure your brother gets home safely and sleeps it off," the first soldier said before they walked off. Alex flashed them a huge grin and a tip of his hat. It wasn't until they were gone that she let out a breath she didn't realize she had been holding.

"You know, for a drunk you're not a half bad talker in a pinch," she said as they started walking again. To her surprise, Alex stood upright and straightened his jacket before walking under his own power.

"I'm not as drunk as I made out," he answered. Yali opened and closed her mouth a few times like a fish out of water, the rage slowly boiling up from within.

"You've been sober this whole time?!"

"No. I've been working my way back to sober this whole time," he corrected.

"But you were drunk, piss drunk at that, it takes hours to get over something like that," she said.

"Not me. Part of my healing factor is that toxins like alcohol get broken down quickly, so I'm over being drunk a lot faster then most people. Up side is there's usually no hangover," he explained.

"I will never understand how I would up working with such strange people," Yali said while shaking her head.

"You get use to it," Alex said with a shrug, "now, we've got a walled city to breech."

Mountains, Southeastern Earth Kingdom mainland.

The remote White Lotus prison was about as far from civilization as one could get. Considering how dangerous the sole prisoner being kept here was, that wasn't something that surprised Mercer a lot. He'd read the file on this Zaheer person that Unalaq had kept, and he was certain that this man would be the perfect replacement for Cross.

In the weeks since Cross' destruction at the hands of the Chambers siblings and Avatar Korra, Mercer had been traveling, looking for a way to restart his dream of a world for his kind. He'd heard the rumors going around. Reports of people developing abilities all over the world from out of thin air. Be it airbending or something else, what was clear was that the first part of his plan was working. But a united future required a figure to unite behind, and for that, he'd need a little help.

Which was where Zaheer came in. He may have anarchist who usually had his own agenda, but he was also very good at what he did, which was work to create chaos. This was why Mercer needed him. When it came to hitting the reset button on all the world's governments, he was the perfect man for the job.

"Open it," he ordered, holding out his hand toward a frightened White Lotus guard. Behind him were the bodies of the guard's comrades, all of them covered in burns and their bodies twisted in all manners of suffering. The guard quickly obliged, opening the vault to reveal a set of bar doors. Before the guard could react, Mercer concentrated on him.

Blisters and burns formed on his face as he grasped his throat, wailing in pain before collapsing against the bars, his face pressed against them as his lifeless eyes stared at the dark interior.

"Who's there?" came the voice from inside. Mercer strode forward and grabbed the corpse by the neck, yanking it backwards from the bars and allowing it to sprawl out.

"Your liberation, Mr. Zaheer, and your day of reckoning," came the answer.

And that's it. This chapter is kinda short and kind of a filler, but hey, that means more action in the future. What did you guys think? Let me know, drop a review, leave a PM, ask questions or send smoke signals, and I'll see you all next time.