The bathtub was filled with salt water. Research papers from work were in the room next door. Shokku's reflection rippled in the basin. He rose his arms over the water, and shutting his eyes he quieted his mind. He felt a cool sensation extend to his right hand, and a warm sensation extend to his left hand. These were the negative and positive energies. He pushed them out, feeling static energy build within his stomach.

There, he had learned, was the precise moment to let the positive and negative energies come crashing together. This was understood as the technique that Fire Lord Zuko had shared with the United Republic of Nations almost half a century before: as a way to resolve a coal mining crisis that sparked tensions between the United Republic and the Earth Kingdom during the beginning of Queen Hou-Ting's reign. The electricity, firebender generated, would produce limitless power for a city long craving for it.

But Shokku recalled his recent research at Sky Castle Bravo. Writing scientific formulae on a black chalkboard, they had deduced that all matter contained an electrical charge: positive and negative.

They had also deduced elsewhere, when he had first begun his work, that a common scientific law governed light, electricity, and magnetism.

Shokku pushed the positive and negative energies further. His stomach began to clench and release in waves. His head hair stood straight up like a broom. Sweat beaded on his brow, he controlled his breathing. He abided in his body, and pushed the cores of positive and negative energies into his hands. As his concentration grew, the pain lessened. A spoon on the bathroom sink rattled towards Shokku.

The contractions ceased. With one last push, the water began to ripple. It bowed back to the far wall.

Shokku gasped in surprise as the positive and the negative energies came crashing together. Before he caught it, the lightning and thunderous din blinded Shokku and sent him crashing to the floor, and the spoon clanged on the bathroom tile. The light bulb blew and the mirror shattered. He lay there, panting in the dark, surprised. He pushed himself up, his ears ringing, looking at the bathroom. Groping for a rubber glove, he put it on his hand and used it to drain the charged tub. The pipes crinkled with electricity as the water escaped.

After cleaning up what he could, he could do nothing about the cracked mirror, he hurried to the cabinet. Pulling out a notepad, he scribbled a note explaining to Wing why the bathroom was in disarray. Then, putting on a light coat, he went out for a walk around Avatar Aang Stupa. Neighbors on the street looked at Shokku, bewildered at his unkempt spiky hair, worried about the cannon-like blast they had heard.

§

Korra titled her head towards Iroh. She was in a bed. The Phoenix Spirit craned its head in through a window.

"It's as I feared." said Iroh. "The darkness is building."

Korra propped herself up in the bed. She could still feel the tension in her neck and chest.

"I've endured worse." said Korra, with a groan as she adjusted herself into a more comfortable pose. "How long was I out?"

"Not long, about four hours in your time." concurred Iroh.

The Phoenix Spirit bowed its head and looked towards Iroh.

Iroh nodded. "If you are ready, the Phoenix Spirit has agreed to take you to the Spirit Portal."

Korra reached her hand out from the bed to pet the Phoenix's beak. Suddenly, the Phoenix's eyes widened and it lurched its head back, rattling ceramic cups on the counter.

Korra pulled off the sheets and stood upright. "What's wrong?"

The Phoenix Spirit looked at Korra, and the words came to her in her own thoughts.

A great evil dwells in you. It is more imminent than I expected. I cannot take you to your destination, lest I turn dark.

"I am sorry." said Korra to the Phoenix, and she turned to Iroh.

Iroh nodded grimly. "Then you must go on foot."

The towering light from the Spirit Portal appeared now in the East. Korra deduced that it was nearing Xai Bau's Grove.

"How long will it take on foot?" asked Korra.

"In your condition" said Iroh, "I cannot tell. If you remember your resolve, and your mind stays fixed on happy days, I am certain the road will rise to meet you." Iroh folded his hands over his stomach. The Phoenix Spirit craned its neck over the roof, and lesser spirits apparated onto the roof to show their support.

"You've got this, Korra!" said the leaf-eared spirit that had guided Korra to Toph Beifong.

"If you cannot close the portal." said Iroh. "Perhaps consulting the Tree of Time will be of use."

Korra bowed. She turned and took her first steps among the hills, never to come back to Iroh's place as Korra.

§

Shokku sat on a park bench across from Avatar Aang Stupa. The walls were laced with geometric patterns and ornamentation. This wall he faced, that the cool midday Sun shaded, was blue: for the water element. The wall to its left was green, for earth; the next wall in that series was red, for fire; and then a muted brown, for the Air Nomads. Its round dome was crowned in a single pinnacle. Here was said to lay some of the ashes of Avatar Aang.

Three Airbender nomads walked passed. Shokku heard them discuss their meditation practice.

Looking up to the wide doorway, his mind drifted to what he had accomplished. I have successfully bent magnetic fields for the first time. It could be used to bend water. He thought to himself. But how to hone this?

And looking up, he noted as he had before the stupa's four sides. As they go higher, they reach a common point. The patterns were less ornate near the top, and faded to a common stone-like color.

Shokku's eyes widened. Turning his attention towards his thinking, he realized that the very words he thought were not solid things inherently existing. They were made up of intention, their narrative qualities, and then they faded.

—Subtler. understood Shokku.

The stupa's pinnacle gleamed in the Sun.

§

The water was to Korra's knees. It extended in every direction she could see, reflecting nothing but the blue sky and her. She took each step one by one as they occurred.

"I should contact Asami." said Korra to herself, as she trudged through the endless mere. "I may be a few days, hopefully less than two. I would want her to know where I am."

Closing her eyes, she put her attention to Asami. At first Asami's image whirled in memory, crisp and clear. The intention arose in her: I am in the Spirit World. I will be home in no more than three days. Stay away from the portal.

But as the thoughts progressed, they suddenly fell out of synch and her breathing stumbled and Asami was receding from her into an inky blackness, and before her arose a red rhombus with a black dot into nothing, and she had to run and run far away and fast because she was running out of time.

Korra gasped, and suddenly found herself crouched on a rocky outcrop overlooking Xai Bau's Grove. A sharp tendril of throbbing pain reached from her neck to her heart. She rose, straight and tall, feet soaked.

She looked to the grove below where the spirit portal now shone. Its path continuing onward for many miles to the horizon and a mountain range. The portal had cloven a mountain peak in two.

§

"Shokku, what happened in the bathroom exactly?" asked Wing, holding the note, as Shokku entered the apartment.

"Didn't you read it?" said Shokku, as he first hung up his light coat next to a mover poster of Jo Dee Garland in The Wizard of Zaofu, and then made for the bathroom. "It's work related."

"Your handwriting is terrible." Wing pulled him in for a kiss on the lips. "What're you working on now?" asked Wing.

"Come and see!" said Shokku, gesturing towards the bathroom.

Wing looked over Shokku's shoulder.

Shokku looked to the tub, motioning his hand over it. "I'm trying to use firebending to induce a magnetic field to bend water."

"Woah! No way!" said Wing. "You can bend magnets?!" He looked sideways towards the mirror cracks and taking a tiny step and flexing his fingers, he bent the earth in the mirror so that it was restored to its proper form.

"It's a variation of lightning bending." explained Shokku, "Electricity and magnetism operate under the same laws: as an electromagnetic field. When you separate the positive and negative energies to produce lightning, the imbalance produces a charge and the two energies must come crashing together. Magnet bending, if you want to call it that, and from my experience, occurs when the positive and negative energies are far apart from one another so as to not immediately influence one another. There is an imbalance, but the only way the energy can go is outside rather than towards the opposite charge. Thus, magnetism."

"You're such a dork. I love it." Wing stood on Shokku's toes. They laced their fingers together. They smiled happily at each other for a moment. Wing spotted the spoon that had fallen on the floor. "Why don't you bend that spoon?" said Wing. "You'd just have to feel the earth that's latent in the metal, right?"

Shokku looked at the spoon and picked it up, noticing his reversed reflection, and sighed. "I can't. To magnetbend at this time requires intense concentration over a large area — for now anyway. And it wouldn't be bending the earth within the spoon, but tapping into its magnetic field, which is entirely different. But that's why I'm trying to practice on the tub: water has what's known as a dipole, a subtle positive charge. I think I could use my bending to influence it. I had some success, but I need to experiment further."

"And that's why you couldn't use it two days ago, when the hijacker had you in his grip." said Wing.

"I didn't even know this form of firebending was practical!" said Shokku. "Or what use it would serve. Besides," he added, "I'm a total coward."

"You'd be surprised what use it could serve." explained Wing, "My grandma discovered metalbending while some bounty hunters had her trapped in a steel box. Now some eighty years later, who could imagine life without metalbending?" Wing put his hand on Shokku's shoulder. "This is some Avatar stuff right here, I'm so proud of you."

Shokku felt a strange energy come over him as he held the spoon, and as Wing had his hand on his shoulder. But Shokku said nothing.

"Are you ok?" asked Wing.

Shokku snapped out of it and asked Wing to continue, but Wing had forgotten what he was saying.

"Hey, my mom's coming to visit tonight." said Wing, brushing Shokku's right arm.

"You told me." said Shokku.

"Just making sure." said Wing with a shrug as we turned to the door. "Maybe you can show her what you've been doing?"

Shokku looked at Wing. "I — uh. I'm not sure that's a good idea."

"Come on! Why not?" said Wing. "My mom is crazy over your family's work on magnets, she'd be thrilled to see a demonstration. And besides, you're just bending." Wing stood back and counted off his fingers. "My mom's seen combustion benders, lavabenders. Varrick, yes the Iknik Blackstone Varrick, did extensive work with magnets when he was staying with my mom in Zaofu. Spirits, she and I even helped teach Avatar Korra metalbending! I'm sure that magnetbending is fine!"

"Maybe, maybe, you're right." said Shokku, holding Wing's hands his his. "Very well, but I need to prepare."

As Wing closed the door, an orange light thread divided the room as the Sun set.

§

The trees in Xai Bau's Grove were bathed in an orange glow. Korra rest her hand against a boulder and looked over the red stream. There was just one mile yet to go between her and the portal. Weary from her day's long journey on foot, she hobbled forward.

There was a rushing noise of leaves as if two lush branches were being used to sweep.

Korra stopped.

At once a black form leaped down from the trees, and roared like a tigerdillo. It was answered, to Korra's dread, out beyond the trees, by a host of dark spirits whose paths suddenly converged with hers.

Korra raised her arms into the air and circled them in great arcs. The trees ignited like torches. The inferno moved among the spirits in a flame wall. Korra stepped backwards, keeping the barrier strong between herself and them. She inched towards the portal in the distance.

Suddenly her vision cut out: she stopped firebending. She felt a dark spirit land a blow into her stomach. It was deadly cold. Dark smoke was billowing from her mouth and nose. A hard wind erupted from her ears. She gasped for air; her eyes bulged. Her heart was boiling like lava. The Dark spirits wanted to reach for something in her heart.

No.

A light appeared in her abyssal mind. Korra felt herself rising in the air, endowed with glorious power. Then she heard and saw no more.

§

Suyin Beifong arrived for a dinner of mashed potato-turnips, and a platypus bear egg omelet. "This is what's called a peasant's dish" said Suyin, eyeing the yellow fluff between her chopsticks, "But it's just so good!"

"We have some tea ready, too." said Wing, in the kitchen.

"Where's Shokku?" asked Suyin, "It's not like him to miss dinner." she went to take a sip of water.

"He's putting together a magnetism presentation." said Wing, washing the dishes. He looked out the window and noted the gray sky. "Huh, it looks like it's going to rain soon — anyway, I knew you'd be delighted to see it. He was very excited about it himself. He says he just learned how to bend water."

Suyin coughed.

"Are you alright, mom?" said Wing, over the roar of a Satomobile revving past.

"Wrong pipe." said Suyin. She cleared your throat. "I beg your pardon? We are talking about Shokku the Firebender, right?"

"Well, yeah." said Wing. "But he learned how to bend magnetic fields, right?"

"Right, Wing, you told me that over the phone today before I left the hotel even though I'm sure that's a United Republic state secret, and you could land yourself in jail just for telling me that." The kitchen fell silent.

"Well." Wing seemed apologetic after a beat, but continued. "Despite that — you've read his parent's papers, and they discovered that water has a slight magnetic charge to it. Right?"

Suyin looked at Wing and blinked. "Why didn't I catch onto that?"

Shokku opened the bathroom door. The presentation was ready, he said, but he insisted that they look on from afar.

§

"We are the Avatar!" declared Avatar Korra. She arose over Xai Bau's Grove on a twister column, with her arms outstretched and her hands turned to the clouds above. A hurricane covered the forest now enveloped in flames. Light erupted from her being and left all else in shadow. "I bid you go, Servants of Vaatu! We have business here and shall not be denied!"

The Dark Spirits looked to the Avatar and were silenced. Delighting in her power, their darkness lifted and they reverted back to their normal forms. Then they left the grove, bewildered, as Avatar Korra bent the sky to rain. The flames died down. As the Avatar returned to the ground, the spirit world around her became soft and sad. Mist rose from the charred branches.

Behind her was the Spirit Portal: she reached out her wet hand. The portal's light beam shuddered.

§

After talking at length about the theory behind what he was doing, and taking a note from Suyin crossing her arms and drumming her fingers that it was time to go on with the presentation, Shokku stood over the water. He took a deep breath and stretched out his arms. Rain started to hit the garbage cans outside in the alley.

He felt the cool in his right hand, the warmth in his left. He pushed them further than intended. He noted the contractions in his stomach intensifying.

Here, he noted subtler. And he evaluated his mind's qualities as he was bending. The magnetic energy was flowing from his fingertips. The water was being pushed against the tiled wall.

— Subtler. His body felt like it was sand-made, and his awareness filled his body like water between each grain.

The water in the tub rose, it rose from the basin. The water was in the air. — Subtler. Shokku, a firebender, was waterbending; and he felt a slight happiness.

It was at that moment, as Suyin gasped in amazement, that a red rhombus with a black dot at its core filled every corner of his mind.

The water erupted into plasma flames. Lightning arced across the entire apartment.

Wing faltered, then his legs gave way under him, he slumped forward and hit the living room floor with a thud. A jolt snapped through his body.

Suyin crouched down, quick as the lightning, and reached out to her son.

The bathroom tiles rippled off the grout. A draught blew through the apartment. Shokku emerged from the bathroom. He grasped the door jamb: his chest exposed, hair standing up like a broom, eyes were wide with fear, body rippling like static with pure energy.

Suyin turned Wing over and saw the scorch mark over his heart. Wing was still breathing in tiny, labored puffs.

"This is bad!" Suyin cried, "Shokku! Call Help!"

Shokku could only see blackness, and the red rhombus with a black dot into nothingness.

§

Avatar Korra leaned into the Spirit Portal and projected her spirit energy into it. A loud din erupted from the hollow, and the light began to waver back and forth cutting a pattern into the clouds as – at last – it began to wane, when it happened.

A shadowy figure appeared in the light and was coming towards her.

"Asami?!" gasped Korra.

Korra snapped out of the Avatar State. As she did, a great purple band like a scythe erupted from her heart. It went into the portal.

Asami's form emerged for just a moment, stunned, her left arm rippling with a purple-black aura. She hung there in the beam. But then she receded into the column and vanished from sight.