Hope you enjoy this chapter:)
The next day, Lin let Zoya accompany her while she trained the airbending children. She took Lin's place during demonstrations, following verbal directions, and going through all of the motions and forms. Ikki didn't want to participate since she lost her airbending, but Lin made her continue training regardless. That afternoon, Lin hired a weapons specialist to come train Ikki and Ursa in throwing knives and darts, and how to use dual swords and tiger swords.
"You have no excuse to not be able to protect yourself. Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe. Suki of Kyoshi Island and Smellerbee of the Earth Kingdom, Mai and Ty Lee of the Fire Nation all were great warriors and none of them, ever had bending." Lin reminded the two.
While they trained with the weapons specialist under Kya's supervision, Jinora, Meelo were left with Korra to practice airbending together while Lin took Zoya into the mountains to practice earthbending. The girl was excellent for her age. She was strong and fierce with earth. Lin gave the girl new forms and exercises to practice and watched and waited while Zoya ran through each assignment a hundred times before they headed back to the temple. Zoya then sparred with Bolin and Korra while Lin took over Jinora and Ikki from Korra.
Korra seemed to be rather aggressive in sparring.
"Is everything okay?" Mako asked approaching the avatar and the two earth benders asked noticing his friend's unusually heated approach to each match.
"No, everything is fine while the world conspires to replace me with some handpicked Avatar!" Korra said erecting a boulder eight times her own size in mass and launching it at Bolin who smashed it into sand. "They will only ruin the balance we have worked so hard to achieve by defeating Amon, Unalaq, Zaheer, Kuvira, the Mech Man..." Korra said breaking up the ground with unevenness, knocking Bolin off of his feet.
"What balance are they ruining exactly? Come to think of it, though they take take some people's bending and grant it to others, maybe those others really needed it. Izumi didn't say the energy benders started a war. It was just an observation she noticed in her population." Mako asked sitting down to watch.
"They attacked the Multi Cultural Center and all of the world leaders the other night. They've united the biggest gangs in republic city! They're terrorizing the weaker ones. You heard Beifong and Kya's report!"
Mako frowned. "I was the one who reported it."
"The Terra Triad and Agni Kais are trying to get an earthbender to love water and air! According to them, she has no problem with earth and fire!" Zoya gasped. They all turned to her and she pretended to simply choke on a bit of dust she inhaled. They ignored her after that. "They want to create their own avatar because I'm not good enough!" Korra yelled. "I'll show them just how good I am!" She said sending an even bigger rock Bolin's way.
"Hey, knock it off! Don't take out all of your issues on MY brother!" Mako said jumping between them, destroying the rock with fire.
"If they want to send their avatar my way, I need to be ready to DESTROY him or her!" Korra said blasting fire at Mako.
"Excuse me," Zoya said looking up at Korra with horror marring her face. She ran. She ran as fast as her little legs could carry her into the mountain range. She found caves and crawled inside as deep as she could, careful to feel the earth with her feet. She was extremely perceptive of the vibrations in the earth. Her seismic sense was nowhere near proficient, but she could get general layouts of places, just not details. She could feel a person coming but not be able to tell who, or differentiate heartbeats. She stayed in the cave the entire afternoon until Lin came home from work to find her weeping.
"They are right!" Zoya cried.
"Who is?" Lin asked bending down to the little girl, feeling her tear stained face in the complete darkness of the caves, monitoring the child's heart beat closely.
"The peope who took me off the streets! Korra is so-" she hiccuped. "Full of herself! She thinks she owns the world. She thinks that she can defeat those guys. She wants to destroy me! She thinks that just because she was born the Avatar, he gets to tell everybody what to do and how to restore peace and balance in the world. She thinks she is the solution to everything. Well, clearly people disagree and are displeased enough to try to make their own Avatar. But I just can't believe she won't even reach out to them or try to find out why they are so unhappy. It is like in her time, people are not allowed to think differently or be unhappy!" Zoya rambled through sobs and hiccups.
"Zoya!" Lin picked up the small child.
"I don't want to fight Korra. If she finds out what they have done to me, she will kill me. But somehow, I want to help her become, I don't know, nicer? There comes a time when confidence becomes conceit and... I don't know what to do anymore. If she sees me bend fire, she will kill me!"
"I won't let her lay hand, pebble, drop of water, flare, or even a brush of air on you. I promise. She can never hurt you."
"What if she will call you a traitor? What if she makes you her enemy too for harboring me? You are so kind and those men seem to have good intentions, but I was unwilling to assist them in their quest to replace Korra! I am afraid!"
"It is okay to be afraid. Only when you are afraid, can you truly be brave. I have something new for you to play with," Lin said taking a lump of a meteorite out of her pocket and placing it into the girl's little hands. "So you can start metalbending. Just focus on the bits of earth within the metal. Just feel for it." She picked up the small child and put a hand over the back of the girl's head. Zoya hid her face in Lin's neck as they walked back towards the main house of the temple in silence, in the moonlight.
The next morning, Zoya was walking along the path to the meditation site at the top of the mountain peak while humming a song about a badgermole and a gofermink when she felt someone coming towards her. She tried to knock the strangers off the mountain, but they didn't roll down the steep slopes or bounce off the ledges. They just earthbent their own outcrop to save themselves and came towards her again. As he got closer, she recognized his weight, and his age then, even though he was hidden in the bushes. She ran. She picked up more people on her tail as she ran up the mountain. The stranger tried to trap her foot with little earth cavities, but she was quick and responded quickly, jumping to avoid them, agile as the airbenders that Lin trained one and a half days a week.
"We're not going to take you back to the swamp!" the stranger yelled launching himself into the air, landing in front of her, knocking her down and grabbing her shirt then both of her hands. She kicked fire at him, but he just grabbed her legs as well, both of her ankles fitting in one of his fists. He spun her around in his grip, turning her away from him so she couldn't even roar fire in his face.
"We just wanted to talk and give you some things. In fact, we are glad you are here. This might be the perfect environment for you to train in. Here you have Kya, a master waterbender to teach you, and Tenzin, the master airbender. It could not be more perfect. When the times comes, Korra will be at your disposal. You have a good heart, Zoya, and if you really want what is the best for the world, you will take her out as soon as you have mastered the four elements. But before we let you go, we have a delivery for you." the earthbender said. As soon as he let go of her wrists and ankles, a waterbender seized control of the blood in her body, immobilizing her. The earthbender walked in front of her, and energy bent another person's bending into her small body. Air. She could feel it but knew she wouldn't be able to bend it. The blood bender knocked her unconscious and they left her there on the mountain side on the dirt path leading to the meditation site at the peak.
"Guys! Guys! I found her! I found Zoya!"a voice yelled. Zoya opened her eyes wearily to see the handsome firebender boy who now worked with the police.
"Zoya!" Bolin and Korra yelled sliding down the mountain side, dropping onto the path just below her and Mako.
"You can't be wandering the mountain side alone with energy benders on the loose!" Korra insisted.
"I- I needed to get out. I just needed time. Where is Lin?!" Zoya asked.
"The Chief is still at work, she gets back in a few hours. Come back to the house," Mako said taking her wrist gently.
"I need to see her!" Zoya decided stubbornly, freeing her wrist from his lazy grasp.
"Why can't you just talk to us? She doesn't like to be bothered," Korra informed the girl.
"You wouldn't understand! I can only talk to her!" Zoya replied pushing them away turning towards the city, wondering how to best get down the mountain and to the city and then find the Police Headquarters once she got there.
"Zoya, you CANNOT leave the mountain!" Korra said firmly. Zoya slid back and threw a rock in the shape of a half donut to pin Korra's wrist to the mountain side. She ducked avouding Bolin's earthbending. Mako shot fire towards her with not enough force to hurt her, but with the intention of breaking her stance so he could grab her. Zoya turned sending it right back to him, but stronger.
They all stopped attacking.
"Did you just- firebend?" Mako asked.
They could see her tiny chest panting. In a moment of panick, she disappeared into the ground, covering up the hole behind herself and made her way through the mountain and into the city, straight into the Police Headquarter's building, punching a hole in the metal floor, climbing out covered in dust and dirt.
"Where's the chief?!" She demanded coughing out some shifty earth from her throat as an officer helped her up.
"Uh..." the officers didn't know what to think of an earth covered child crawling out of the floor.
Lin could feel the girl's racing heart from her office on the fourth floor and rushed down.
"Zoya! What happened? Why are you here?"
"I couldn't control it!" Zoya cried falling into the Chief's arms as the other detectives and receptionists and officers on the first floor watched in disbelief at the Chief's display of affection. Lin scooped Zoya off the floor and carried her up the stairs to her office on the fourth floor and closed the door.
"It is soundproof. You can speak freely here." she said to the girl.
"They found me! They gave me another bender's power: another airbender's power! And then they knocked me out. I don't know for how long. Mako and Bolin and Korra found me. I was so scared. I tried to get away, to tell you what happened, and they attacked me trying to bring me back to the temple. I pinned Korra and avoided Bolin, but Mako- he firebent at me, and I returned it! It was purely a defensive maneuver. I know, I am so stupid! I should have just used the earth to make a wall, to block it, but I couldn't! THey're going to tell everybody! They're going to hurt me!"
"Shhhhhhhh..." Lin said holding the girl in her lap, rubbing circles on her back, holding her against her armor. "Just breathe. You are not stupid. You are learning. You can't be expected to have perfect control of your bending as soon as you have it. Most avatars take years to perfect each element one at a time. You're barely seven years old. Just calm down, okay? You can stay here the rest of the day if you keep quiet, and then we can go home together and speak with Tenzin and Korra. How does that sound?"
"Alright, I suppose," the girl said sniffling and wiping her eyes.
Usually, Tenzin's children greeted Lin at the gondola when she returned home from work, but this evening, the Temple seemed eerily quiet. Zoya walked behind Lin, holding onto her leg as they made their way towards the main house. Lin retracted the soles of her metal boots to check. "We have company," she explained to Zoya as she pushed open the door to find the Fire Lord and the Premier of the Earth Kingdom among the residents of the main house.
"Why didn't you tell us you found the other Avatar in that wretched swamp?" Suyin demanded sitting back on one of the couches with her arms folded and one ankle perched on her knee. Fire Lord Izumi sat beside her, regal as ever with her back straight, and a saucer and cup of tea in her hands as she gazed over her reading spectacles to look at Lin.
"Korra told us what you did, protecting her, taking her in as your ward. Are you working with them too?" Izumi asked.
"Have you taken my place with the Terra Triad?" Suyin asked.
"Listen, Look!" Lin took a second to pinch the bridge of her nose before beginning to explain. "Zoya is seven years old. I have talked to her. She doesn't even want to be a bender, let alone a bender of all four elements. The energy benders found her when she was three and forced her to accept the power and train. She's just been a pawn in their sick game. Yes! I want to protect her from them, and apparently, I have to protect her from you too. We could all be on the same side if it weren't for Korra's daily declarations of wanting to kill the other avatar on the spot once found. I can see why the terrorists want a new avatar. Our current one is blinded by insecurities, hate and greed. We can't have an Avatar that thinks she can just waltz into any skirmish and automatically know what is best for the world. If we all went along with Korra, we would be murdering a child with so much potential."
Everyone sat in silence for a moment, stunned. Korra's jealousy boiled inside. How dare the Chief of Police insult the avatar. "Well, if that is how you feel," Korra took a stance and attacked with fire only to be blocked by the Fire Lord. Zoya ducked behind Lin.
"Stand down, Avatar Korra," Izumi said looking down pensively. "We can groom this child to work together with all of us."
"I don't want to be groomed by anybody!" Zoya yelled at the Fire Lord with the most determined green eyes. She did look a lot like Lin. "I don't want to solve the world's problems. I don't want to be traded like a gold piece or a trophy! I was born a non-bender. My mother was a prodigy who told me she was GLAD that I couldn't bend because then I wouldn't be expected to throw my life before anybody. She was glad I would be safe from the recruitment of the city guard and safe from the eaerth queen's Dai Li. She was glad I was weak and wouldn't be feared by anybody. We lived in PEACE together! I HATE bending and I HATE the responsibility!" the child yelled, making little earth quakes with each stomp of the foot. She roared fire then collapsed on the floor in a small mound of sobs. "In an instant, I would give back what they gave to me to the people from whom they stole the bending."
Lin bent down and held the girl in her arms.
"Poor thing," Suyin sighed leaning forward to reach out a reassuring hand on the small earth bender's shoulder.
"Poor thing? She is a tiny monster in the making!" Korra yelled.
"How do we know you're not the monster already made? The way you drew conclusions so damn quickly and twisted your words and phrases to make people hate really has me wondering if you are fit to be the Avatar. Do you really think a seven year old is a threat? It is the energy benders we should concern ourselves with since it appears it takes years to even create this little thing." Izumi said motioning to the girl.
"Zoya, would you like to help other children from being exploited like you were? Would you like to help save them from this fate?" Lin asked Zoya in a whisper, barely audible to anyone but the girl.
"Yes," Zoya whispered leaning on Lin's shoulder.
"When you are ready, could you tell us everything you remember about the group that took you off the streets? When you met them, what they said to you, what they looked like, what they did to you? It will help us find them and put them away so that they can't hurt any more children like you," Lin explained.
"Mhm," Zoya sighed once again burying her face in Lin's neck.
Suyin and Izumi stayed the night on Air Temple Mountain, eager to hear what Zoya had to say, but had to be patient. Both Lin and Zoya opted out of breakfast with the others to go meditate on the mountain peak.
"Who would have thought, two little earthbenders meditating by choice. Tenzin, you gotta step up your game." Suyin commented spotting Lin and Zoya beginning their descent down the mountain path.
"She is ready to talk," Lin announced. Mako went to fetch a clipboard, some papers, and a pen. He sat with Lin, Suyin and Izumi in the living room.
"My name is Zoya. I was born seven years and sixteen days ago in Zaofu. I don't know my mother's name but she was beautiful and young. Maybe too young. She was a soldier and hid me in our apartment because she didn't want her liege lord to be angry with her.
"She taught me geography and astronomy and basic self defense. She told me I was lucky to be born without bending. She said she was scared and didn't ever feel safe. She wanted protection since she was abandoned at a young age, but because of her bending prowess, she was made into a guard. She said she would set no bar for me and that it was up to me to find my passion and live up to my full potential.
"I was three years old when she took me out of my our apartment for the first time and on an airship. She told me that my father was an inventor who died after an experiment of his went horribly wrong. I was hidden in her private quarters on the air ship for a week. Then hidden in the room of a palace for a few months. Then hidden in a room on a train for two years.
"I was five years old when my mother left one morning and didn't come back. I woke in the aftermath of a battle in a city I had never seen, but didn't even know her name to ask about her fate. On my sixth day alone, the Terra Triad found me and gave me food and water and a place to sleep.
"They talked to me about how much they disliked the avatar and the metalbending police and the queen of Ba Sing Se and the Airbenders who got in the way of every change that the people wanted to initiate just to keep power in their own hands. They told me that the Avatar was self-centered, stubborn, and blind to reason. They told me time is an illusion and so is death. The avatar in Korra died during Harmonic Convergence and that the next Avatar had already been born in the earth kingdom. They told me that I was the next avatar even though Korra is still living.
"They put their hands here and here," on her forehead and neck "and the next day when I got scared I could earth bend. They told me I would be the next avatar and that I wouldn't be alone. They'd kill my spirit eventually and begin making the next one from some fire nation child. They said to be able to make a new avatar with energy bending, they still had to comply with the old avatar cycle. The claim that Korra started a new cycle one is a myth.
"What they did made sense at first, but then they became mean. If I didn't train, they wouldn't feed me. They gave me the earthbending of someone extremely powerful, I could tell. The strength felt familiar and easy to manipulate. The firebending of some prodigy, the airbending of a child next and the waterbending of someone on their death bed. It was weak and I couldn't use it for anything. I was blocked at air, so they tried giving me the airbending of a master, but it still wouldn't work."
Zoya took a deep breath and let her body slump as all she could remember came out.
"Do you think you may have Ikki's airbending inside of you?" Lin asked furrowing her brow and folding her arms as she stood behind Mako.
"I don't know. I thought the child's bending felt so weak. I thought all of Master Tenzin's children were becoming masters at prodigiously young ages. I never thought they'd be weak," Zoya shrugged.
"The Master must be Zaheer! He told you guys! When he stopped flying and you went to visit him, he said a bunch of stuff about how his bending was wasted on a prisoner and that he gave it up to the new avatar!" Mako thought aloud.
"If I do have Ikki's bending, I can try to give it back. It wouldn't be a loss since I don't know how to use it anyways," Zoya offered.
"Do you know how?" Suyin asked cautiously.
"I've seen them do it to others and to me," Zoya informed them.
"It couldn't hurt, I suppose." Lin shrugged.
So Zoya tried. She closed her eyes and focused inward on hers and Ikki's energy. She searched and cleared her mind of grief for her lost mother and found love in Lin who cared for her and protected her from everyone including the current avatar and fire lord and interim premier of the Earth Kingdom. She released the air chakra and bent the energy into Ikki's heart. She felt weaker but held on until the transfer was done then let go, stumbling slightly. Ikki stood up, took a stance and punched in the direction of the window and blasted a tornado of air. She gasped and hugged Zoya. "Thank you!"
Ikki and Zoya spent the rest of the evening playing in the corner of the living room. Ikki made tiny tornadoes, and Zoya juggled a handful of pebbles between her fingers.
"Excuse me, ladies," Mako said finding Lin and Suyin in the room that Izumi was using. "So I made a timeline of Zoya's movement from birth based on the locations I could decipher based on her descriptions and then jotted some notes on the people she knew..." Mako began.
"As you were supposed to. Just get to the point!" Lin snapped with her arms folded and her back leaning against the door frame.
"She was born in Zaofu, then lived in an airship and then a palace most likely in Ba Sing Se, and then woke up in Republic City to the aftermath of a battle, and all in in three years, beginning four and a half years ago. Is it just me or does that coincide with Kuvira's rise to power?" Mako asked.
"Kuvira didn't have a daughter!" Suyin growled dismissing the idea. "She was captain of the guard since she was sixteen years old. If she is Kuvira's, then Kuvira would have been pregnant at seventeen. I think I would have noticed nine months of there being two heartbeats in her body!"
"Maybe not," Lin thought aloud. "Zoya said her mother was afraid her liege lord would be angry with her for having a child, so she hid the girl. What if Kuvira used earthbending to stabilize whatever extra vibrations the additional heartbeat caused, effectively hiding the baby's existence?"
"I knew Kuvira was always a powerful bender with so much potential, but that just seems so... impossible." Suyin argued.
"Where is Kuvira being held? Why don't you just go ask her?" Izumi suggested.
"She's being held on a wooden barge in the middle of the ocean, guarded by fire and waterbenders, and no metal or earth is allowed within a two mile radius of her, since her bending is so strong." Mako informed them.
"Should we bring Zoya to identify her?" Izumi asked.
"I am inclined to say no, but I don't want to leave her anywhere after all that she has been through." Lin admitted.
"Then I guess we are bringing her," Suyin said stretching her arms.
"Shall we go in the morning?" She asked.
"Yeah."
"Great, then, I am going to bed," Suyin yawned and walked down the hall to her temporary room on Air Temple Island.
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