Ba Sing Se
Korra pulled back her hair into a braid. The triple ponytail look was a little too distinctive for what they needed today. Jinora was sat cross-legged on the cabin's bed, breathing evenly. Her mind was several miles ahead of them, 'rendezvousing' with Kai. Tenzin had not appreciated Korra's air quotes around the word. Jinora's blushing and Ikki's giggles hadn't really helped with that.
The cabin on the airship was Korra's. They had had enough of these early morning call outs and covert expeditions for the ship to feel like something between the family car and a holiday home. A dysfunctional family's car, admittedly, but it worked. And it meant that she had a supply of clothing that she hadn't slept in or spilled beer on. It was time to tool up.
Korra wrapped her hands, testing the tension with a couple of punches. They'd do. She'd cover the wrappings themselves with gloves and long sleeves when they left the ship; it didn't do to look too much like a wandering MMA contestant, and her tattoos were practically like wearing a passport on her sleeve. She wished she could use proper waterskins, just for once, but she had to settle for a light rucksack and two water bottles. It didn't quite have the same intimidation factor. Or style. She hunted down the shirt, plain blue, and the fraying black fingerless gloves. At this rate she'd need a new pair. Korra glanced at Jinora but the girl was still meditating. Great. Waiting never had been Korra's specialty. She knotted and reknotted her boots, testing her movements in the cramped cabin until a knock at the door disturbed her. She directed the water back into its bottles, dropping the rucksack.
"Who is it?" She asked.
"Me," The voice answered helpfully. Korra rolled her eyes, opening the door to find Mako stood there looking awkward, and it wasn't just because he was wearing civilian clothes for what could well have been the first time in weeks. "Look, I know this isn't a great time..."
"We're about to go investigate multiple abductions. Yeah, it's not exactly time for a chat."
"Always with the smart answer." Mako sighed, but for once he didn't actually look irritated.
"I didn't mean, at the hatch...I know this is hardest on you. I, well, actually I don't get it. None of us can, can we? That's kind of the problem."
The hint of humour was gone from Korra's face now. He took her expression and silence as agreement. "But please, please be careful, ok?"
"Don't need to be careful," Korra replied and Mako started to scowl. "Why would I? I know you've got my back."
That made him smile, if only for a moment. Korra heard the bed creak behind her and craned her neck, seeing Jinora stretching, clearly back on the physical plain.
"Good timing, supercop."
Jinora relayed the information Kai had picked up, including a potential route the kidnappers may have taken their firebender down. It was a start at least. Korra leaned over the map in the main room, and tapped a spot with her finger.
"Here. This is our best bet at dropping in undetected. We've all got passes, but if we go all the way into the upper ring we're going to lose valuable time. Worst case, Hooty-Mc-Bitchface..."
"Queen Hou-Ting," Tenzin corrected.
"Isn't that what I said?" Korra asked innocently. "Well, her, or her attendants, could interfere and keep us trapped up there, sipping tea and eating stupid little sandwiches. As much as I like sandwiches that's not going to happen. We disembark here. It's pretty much on our approach so it won't look too suspicious."
Bolin twisted his head, trying to read the map upside down.
"When you say disembark..."
"THIS IS NOT DISEMBARKING!" Bolin yelled. Korra pretended not to hear him, heaving open the lower hatch of the airship. They wouldn't be using the ladder this time.
"Just hold tight to Opal," Mako reassured him. "Normally it's getting you to let go of her that's the problem." He added, nudging his brother, who shoved him in retaliation. Jinora cleared her throat.
"Boys. Behave."
They both stopped at her curt, disturbingly Tenzin-sounding tone. Jinora didn't seem to notice their expressions. "Honestly, you're as bad as Meelo. We've got a really small window here, we can't miss it."
Korra and Opal exchanged a look over the younger airbender's head.
"Is that mission-orientated Jinora we're hearing, or 'I get to physically see my boyfriend for the first time in three months so don't screw it up' Jinora?" Korra asked, and the blush was answer enough. "Knew it! Ahem, sorry. Jinora's right. Let's keep focused til we're at least on the ground, ok? Here comes the factory."
The factory was indeed coming into view through the open hatch. As was its great chimney, belching smoke into the sky. An eyesore, an environmental nightmare, and a perfect entry point. Assuming you could fly, of course.
They jumped in quick succession, the plumes of smoke hiding their descent from any eyes on the ground. Mako's firebending would have been too obvious but Jinora and Korra took an arm each in freefall, slowing their descent and dragging their covering blanket of smog down with them, all but scraping themselves against the chimney stack. They landed gently. Bolin and Opal were a little less graceful; Bolin was latched onto Opal's back like a terrified koala and they toppled over backwards on hitting the ground, landing Bolin squarely on his backside with Opal still in a death grip. It took a very unsubtle cough from Mako for him to realise that he was no longer falling through the air and to open a shallow tunnel to get them outside of the factory fence and onto the streets of Ba Sing Se.
"That wasn't so bad, was it?" Korra asked with a grin, and Bolin just huffed, brushing the muck off his trousers.
They skulked in the backstreets while Jinora went to fetch Kai. Korra called Tenzin, assuring him that they had landed undetected. Jinora finally emerged, leading Kai. He'd grown an inch in the last few months but he was still lean and scrawny, his hair looking more tousled than usual. Korra raised one eyebrow and Jinora steadfastly refused to make eye contact.
They didn't hang around to make small talk. Kai led them through the alleyways, past the still ruined scene of the apparent abduction, to a large grate set into the worn cobblestones. It was the work of a moment for Korra to bend it open and for them to drop inside. Bolin opted to use the ladder instead, grumbling about airbenders as he did so. Korra shut it behind them, leaving no trace of their entrance.
The tunnel beneath was surprisingly high and wide, and while it smelled musty there was a thankfully absence of anything worse than mould and rubbish that had been washed down.
"This is so much better than that sewer in Omashu," Bolin said with feeling, and even Mako shuddered at that particular memory. This time he was much more cautious in conjuring up a fireball to light the tunnel for them, but mercifully there were no pockets of methane this time round. It had been something of a learning experience for them all. Even with Mako's light all they could see was near endless tunnel.
"So." Mako looked from one end to the other, his voice echoing slightly. "Which way?"
It was Jinora who made the call, and they set off for the branch that led out of the city, towards the infamous Lake Laogai. It was supposed to have been filled with concrete following the fall of the Dai Li, but the absurdly spacious tunnel they were currently walking through did nothing to suggest that. Korra was bringing up the rear, lost in thought. To have kept the lake base open would have required a great deal of political leverage, not to mention money. If this was where the firebender had been taken they were going up against something big. That did not bode well. She wasn't really paying attention, too lost in thought, which was why she walked straight into Kai's back. The party had come to an abrupt halt, Mako holding his makeshift torch a little higher. The brickwork had been blackened, a thin layer of soot that came off when Mako rubbed it. He sniffed his fingers.
"Firebender. Maybe a week ago. Seems like it could be our guy," he announced grimly. "Eyes open, people. Let's not lose anyone else today."
The tunnel was too long and too dark and too quiet. Every rustle, every footstep was deafening. Korra could hear her heartbeat and it was really beginning to piss her off. Then she thought about just how ridiculous that sentence was and had to bite on her hand to stop from giggling out loud. It was Jinora's turn to give her a questioning look.
They stopped again, this time because they'd run out of tunnel. It had been bricked up ahead of them. Korra eyed the wall up.
"Jinora. Do your thing, if you don't mind."
Jinora promptly sat down on the flagstones, crossing her legs and closing her eyes. It only took a moment for the blue translucent form to climb out of its mortal host and stride through the brickwork. Bolin spoke for all of them.
"Does that still creep anyone else out?"
Jinora's head poked back through the wall.
"You're going to want to see this." She said, but she didn't look happy. "Oh, and this isn't a wall. It's a door. There's a mechanism through here."
"Can you open it?" Bolin asked. Jinora rolled her eyes, walking back towards her body, straight through Bolin. Bolin shuddered. "Ok, ok, message received. Please never do that again?"
"Bo, stop goofing around and get that wall open," Korra sighed. Bolin did so, splitting the rock neatly. They entered cautiously, although Jinora surely would have warned them about any imminent threats. Kai found a light switch and miraculously resisted the urge to utter a pun about throwing light on the situation. The fluorescent tubes flickered into life.
"Well. This certainly isn't the lake Laogai Aang knew."
The room they had entered into was six sided. No windows, just heavy looking doors like those on bank vaults. Four of them had a symbol painted on them. Air and Water on side, on the other Earth and Fire. The door immediately opposite them was blank.
"Anyone else really not liking this?" Kai asked, to a mute chorus of nods. Mako headed for the door marked 'Fire', spinning the wheel to withdraw the heavy bolts. It swung open.
This room too was empty, blasted with scorch marks. There were chains in the centre, attached to winches set into the floor, but there was no visible means to activate them. And then there was the contraption set up to one side of the room. Mako didn't need to be told to start doing his detective thing.
Bolin and Opal had ventured beyond the unmarked door, finding another hexagonal room. The first try found nothing more exciting than an empty meeting room, a dozen maps tacked up on the wall, covered in coloured pins. The second contained a whole mess of computers and monitors. Opal took the desk chair, powering them up. They weren't password protected, possibly because people living in underground lairs figure they already have all the security they need. The first monitor was a set of security cameras. By the looks of it there were cameras in each of the first set of rooms, covering multiple angles. Bolin found a set of control panel marked "fire". He pushed one of the buttons.
Mako had given up on the chains and was examining the only other thing in the room. The device came up to about chest height, made of black metal. There was an arm or probe pointing towards the centre of the room, and a heavily shielded tank attached to the other side. With a flammable warning sticker on it. Mako walked back round to the front. The penny was stubbornly refusing to drop when he brought his eye close to the end of the probe, just in time to see the pilot light ignite.
"Wha...SHIT!"
And then the world was an inferno.
Bolin was frozen in horror. Opal snatched the control panel from him, deactivating the flamethrower. The flames died at once, revealing a very shaken and somewhat singed Mako. He turned to one of the cameras, arms raised. Opal wished she wasn't able to lip-read. Mako was being unusually creative in his rant at whoever had just nearly set him alight, although he seemed to be ignorant of the limitations of human anatomy.
Mako's sleeve was still smoking when he joined them in the control room, brushing off Bolin's stammered apologies. Kai joined them, doing a double take at Mako's appearance but deciding it was probably safer not to go there.
"This place is empty." He announced. "Kitchen's clean, not as much as a crumb. Bunkhouse is all made up for ten but there's not even a loose sock. No sign of either of the benders they took. Opal, what are you..."
Opal had pulled something out of her pocket and was plugging it into the computer.
"Hard drive. There might be something useful on here, but this isn't the place to do home movie night. We can look at it on the ship, maybe find out why someone was trying to BBQ a firebender."
"Cos they're idiots?" Bolin suggested. "I mean, you can't burn...a firebender..." he trailed off. "Oh hell."
Mako caught on.
"Shit. Where's Korra and Jinora?"
"They're," Kai turned to an empty space behind him. "Huh. They were right there."
"Shit."
Mako dodged round him, running for the corridor.
"Why do I feel like the outsider?" Kai asked. "And why are we shitting?"
Bolin made a face.
"Dude. Phrasing."
Opal had turned back to the security cameras, cycling through the feeds to find the one they needed. Mako had reached the Water room, but there was no Korra there. Jinora was there, sat on the floor, but by the way she didn't react to Mako careering in she was only there in body.
The setup was different in this room. There was a deep pool in the centre of the room, and a single chain snaked up from a coil in deepest part of it. By the size of the metal ring it was designed to be secured around someone's neck.
"We need to find Korra." Bolin wasn't worried she'd come to harm; they'd heard nothing and Jinora certainly would have warned them if they were under attack. It was more about stopping Korra bringing harm to others. "Kai, what else did you find? Where could she have gone?"
"Uh..." The young airbender started ticking them off on his fingers. "Kitchen, bunkhouse, living room, bathroom, exit tunnel, weapons storage..."
"Exit tunnel?" Bolin repeated in disbelief. "You know, you make a much better thief than a scout. Can you guys..."
"We've got this," Opal reassured him.
The exit tunnel was even wider than the one they had entered by; judging by the tyre tracks the former occupants had been able to fit full-sized trucks down it, and it was considerably longer. Bolin started off at a run but he had to give that up long before he saw any sign of Korra. To rub salt in the wound Mako chose that moment to quite literally rocketed past him, propelling himself with blast of fire from his hands and feet.
"Cheat!" Bolin tried to yell, but he was too out of breath. Most likely Korra had done the same. It would explain why Jinora hadn't tried to keep pace with her. That was a worry all of its own though; Korra didn't tend to break out the rocketman impersonation without a good reason.
Mako cut his jets when he saw daylight, approaching the opening carefully. They were way out of the city limits now, somewhere near the motorway judging by the distant roar of engines. Korra was sat at the base of a boulder just off from the dirt track, hugging her knees to her chest. Jinora's spirit was sat nearby. They were speaking but it was too quiet for Mako to hear. They stood as he approached, Korra looking slightly sheepish as she failed to hug Jinora's incorporeal form, and the girl laughed. She accepted Mako's arm as they returned to the tunnel, Jinora fading back to her body.
It was a long walk back.
By the time they returned Opal had already duplicated the hard drive, taken extensive photographs including the maps on the wall, the machines and the weaponry they had left behind. There was nothing for them to do but close the wall behind them and pretend they had never been there.
Bolin tried to get Korra interested in another high-octane exit strategy but she wasn't interested. They simply showed their passes, including the spare they'd bought for Kai, and boarded the train to the upper ring. Opal pulled her jacket close, the hard drive feeling like a lead weight in her inner pocket.
Tenzin looked as drained as they felt when they entered the airship. Korra shunned the central table. She sat a little way off on the sofas, absent-mindedly spinning a few marbles about with airbending as the others filled Tenzin in. Opal checked that Bumi was still distracting Meelo and Ikki in a different part of the ship before she loaded some of the video files onto her laptop. She'd had time to watch them while the others had been finding Korra, but no way near enough time to process.
Tenzin did not react in the slightest as men in masks manhandled the firebender into the cell, locking chains about his neck and ankles. He did not blink as they withdrew, leaving the man to come round from whatever beating they had subjected him to, nor as the captive hammered on the unforgiving steel doors. He didn't flinch as the flamethrower ignited, or as the chains began to be retracted, dragging the man towards the path of the flames, inch by inch. He swallowed when he was finally pulled into the flames, desperately bending the inferno around him. And then the fire died, and the man slumped to the floor, clearly exhausted, clearly weeping. The footage ended. Tenzin sat back in his chair.
"There are others." Opal said quietly, but she didn't need to raise her voice. "One waterbender. And three...three nonbenders."
"Who would do something like this?" Kai asked, uncharacteristically serious. There was a click from across the room. Korra had dropped a marble. She stopped twirling the remaining three.
"We know who it is." She said, and she sounded about thirty years older than she should. "The testing. Finding benders. We've all seen this before."
There was silence. Nobody wanted to the one to say it, to invoke the name, to make it real. Korra picked up the dropped piece, rolling the set round in her hand. The engraving was worn by time and handling, but the symbol of the Air Nomads was still just about legible. Korra closed her fist round them.
"The Equalists are back."
Sorry it took so long to update! Any reviews, no matter how harsh, are very welcome.
