Outside, I saw that night had already fallen here, and the air felt warm and moist like the Earth Kingdom in late spring. Nobody was in sight, but I only had to run a few yards down the street, following the sounds of a vicious fight, before I saw them. It was a good thing Danny had warned me about Vlad's particular power, or I would have thought I was hallucinating when I saw four of him surrounding the young boy with murder in his eye, all of them floating several feet above the ground.

Screaming in fury, Danny shot green energy blasts at two of his opponents, causing them to evaporate into thin air. A third disappeared on his own, I assumed turning invisible or intangible. As a blue aura surrounded him, Danny shot a blue stream of energy at the last, encasing him in a block of ice just like that dark spirit back in the Ghost Zone. Danny flew at him, but before Danny could reach him or he could hit the ground, Vlad somehow broke out of the ice and fired his own red energy blast at Danny.

Danny managed to dodge two shots before one connected, sending him crashing into the ground. He was up almost instantly, sending Vlad flying back with a punch in the same motion. As I ran closer, they struggled in midair, dodging and exchanging blows, until Vlad managed to grab Danny by the throat and threw him into the ground again. Danny got right to his feet and fired another beam of ice at Vlad with both hands, but he dodged it, then vanished. I stopped where I was and stood still, on my guard, waiting to see where he would turn up next.

Firing energy blasts randomly in all directions, Danny yelled, "Show yourself!" With a grunt of pain as one shot apparently hit him, Vlad reappeared a few away, not floating or flying but standing on the ground. Danny flew straight at him, and, in spite of what I'd seen already, I still gasped as, just as Danny reached him, the man seemed to split in two. Both of them grabbed Danny's arms, while another appeared in front of him.

The Vlad who had just turned visible said, "You brought this upon yourself, Daniel," before aiming his fist at Danny and firing what looked like red lightning right at his chest. Wreathed in a red aura, Danny screamed in pain, shuddering and struggling against the two that held him but unable to break free. The third Vlad didn't move but stayed in that position, firing a steady stream of electricity at his victim.

Up until then, I'd been trying to get as close as possible, stay out of the line of fire, and look for an opening where I could attack in a way I knew would help Danny. My rage at the horrific image I was seeing now drove me to make my first move. With a furious cry, I ran towards them, shooting flames at everyone but Danny. The two holding him were hit and disintegrated, dropping Danny to the ground. It was probably a good thing I'd seen him transform earlier, or I might've gotten distracted by seeing it now for the first time. The third Vlad stopped his attack and put up a red shield in time to protect himself from the fire, but that didn't stop my blast of air from pushing him back several yards.

I ran up next to the now-human Danny, who was half-lying, half-sitting on the ground, rubbing his head and moaning in pain. I didn't blame him. I didn't have time to ask if he was okay, though, with all my concentration focused on my opponent. "You!" Vlad shouted as he flew back towards me. I managed to time it just right so that a pillar of earth shot up right under him and knocked him away before he knew it was coming. As I lowered the rock back into place, he came back down and landed in front of the spot, rubbing his chin, stunned by the blow. "You're not a ghost. How are you doing this?" he asked me in shock.

I responded by shooting more fire at him, but he either dodged it all or turned intangible and then back again. He tried firing at me, but I raised a wall of rock in front of me. When I lowered it, he was staring at me in an equal mixture of frustration and wonder. I sent a shockwave through the ground towards him, which he easily floated up to avoid, but his focus on me caused him to miss the rock the shockwave sent falling on top of him. It looked like it had crushed him, but he walked right through it and stood in front of it, perfectly unharmed.

"You certainly know an interesting array of tricks," he calmly observed. "What else can you do?" He shot another red blast at me, but I cartwheeled away and dodged the next barrage of blasts Airbender-style, working my way behind him (I was faster than he was) and, before he could turn around, hitting him with a strong burst of air. He was knocked off his feet before he came to a halt several yards away. Not giving him time to recover, I shot one fireball after another at him, kicking up a storm of dust and smoke.

When I finally stopped and the smoke cleared, Vlad was standing behind a red sphere of energy, unharmed but with the edges of his cape smoking, showing at least some of my shots had connected. "Amazing. I've never seen power like this," he said in awe.

I tried pulling two slabs of rock up from the street next to him, crushing him between them, but he simply floated right up out of them and landed calmly back on the ground. As I stood there with two fire daggers burning in my hands, trying to think of something I hadn't tried yet, he asked, "What are you?"

Talking might buy me some time to think. Not dropping my guard, I proudly answered, "I'm Avatar Korra, master of all four elements – Earth, Fire, Air, and Water!" That must have been thorough enough.

To my surprise, Vlad crossed his arms and, grinning in amusement, said, as if repressing a laugh, "And Heart?" What? Hadn't Danny said something like that earlier? In the pause as I tried to remember, he added, "Sorry, couldn't resist." He instantly fired another blast at me, but I easily spun away from it, creating a funnel of air in the same motion that I shot in his direction. He vanished effortlessly – when he reappeared, before he could move, I crouched down and brought both my hands together, surrounding him in a circle of fire.

Instead of turning intangible, Vlad stood calmly behind the short wall of flames smiling like a scientist in a laboratory who's just made a remarkable new discovery. "Elemental powers. Classic but formidable. How did someone like you end up in our humble world? Oh, the things one could do here with powers like yours... hmm... I wonder..."

I could tell Vlad was planning something, and I braced myself for whatever his next move might be. Far to my left, I heard Danny gasp and say, "Korra, watch out!" It was less than a second later that Vlad disappeared with a disturbing laugh. I felt something like a rush of cold air hit me, then, all of a sudden, my entire body started tingling from head to toe, right before I went numb and everything turned black.

It was the most disorienting sensation I'd ever experienced, as if I'd been flung right out of my own body but hadn't gone anywhere. I couldn't move, I couldn't speak, I couldn't see or hear anything. I was completely disconnected from my body and the world. But I sensed something... another presence within me. Something dark. Something evil. Full of wrath, frustration, fear, despair, lust, envy, loneliness, and an all-consuming obsession. I hated it, I tried to push it away, but it refused to let me go. As I fought against it, I felt something else rise up: confusion. Something was happening that shouldn't be. "What is this...?"

That was the last thing I felt before, out of nowhere, I sensed yet another presence overtaking me. I felt a wave of fear and anger but also compassion, strength, courage, determination, honor. As the second presence struggled with the first, forcing it away from me, I felt awareness of different parts of my body return one by one.

Finally, with a terrible rush like I'd fallen a hundred feet in half a second, they were gone. My body was back in my control, my senses all working again. I stumbled forward, unable to get my balance, but two hands caught my shoulders and held me up as I gasped for breath, pressing my hand to my forehead.

I heard Danny, who was obviously the one who caught me, ask, "Korra, you okay?!"

Steadying my breath, I gasped, "What... what happened?"

"He..." Danny hesitated, and I could tell by his tone that I wasn't going to like the answer. "He tried to take over your body."

"He what?!"

As I raised my head, both my fists now ablaze with flame, the first thing I saw was Vlad, several yards right in front of me, also breathing hard and clutching his head. I heard him say, "Incredible... I've never sensed power like that before. What was that...?" He raised his face towards me, quickly regaining his composure. "You're full of surprises, aren't you, my dear? Shame Daniel talked you into taking his side first..."

In hindsight, it was fortunate Vlad didn't give me any time to dwell on what he tried to do to me. My rage hadn't even finished building up before I saw Danny, back in his black and white ghost form, dart in front of me. The green wall surrounded us just as a blast from Vlad's fist shot towards us, exploding against the shield. It all happened so fast that, had I blinked, I would have had no idea how Danny and I ended up behind another shield of his while Vlad bombarded us with blasts of energy, laughing in between shots. "Stalling for time, are we? If you insist..."

He continued to fire blasts at the barrier, Danny grunting and straining under each one. That last attack before I'd joined in must have really taken a lot out of him. Vlad clearly had no intention of letting his rival get away easily. "I hope you have a better plan than this, Daniel!"

I stepped next to Danny as the green dome around us shrank a little. "We can't hide under here forever!" I said, keeping my eyes on our attacker and punching my fist in my palm. "Let's fight!"

"I don't know if I can..." Danny said in a strained voice but keeping his arms raised. "Wish I had some of our weapons..." It looked like it took every ounce of his strength to keep the shield up; he couldn't even turn to look at me once while we were under there. I'd been right – he was in bad shape, and it was all the more frightening to see because I hadn't expected it. I hadn't thought about how much more powerful than Danny someone with twenty years more experience would be...

Still, I'd seen enough to know that Danny was pretty powerful himself, even without weapons. Thinking back to the fights I'd seen him in earlier made me ask, "Can't you use that sound attack I saw you use in the Ghost Zone?"

I could tell it took Danny a lot of effort to answer me. "I do that, I'll hold him off for about ten seconds, then I'll be out of power, and we'll both be doomed." Vlad tried flying above us and diving at the shield like a cannonball. He didn't break through, but I felt the ground shake, and the shudder that went through the dome seemed to go through Danny as well. "I can't keep this up much longer. Got any ideas?"

I looked around us, trying to come up with a strategy, searching for something, anything I could use to help us, but everything I saw somehow reminded me how easily this ghost could escape anything I threw at him. "No," I admitted, shaking with frustration and outrage at what Vlad had tried to do to me, furious that I couldn't think of a way to fight back. "I don't know what your sister expected me to do. I can't fight something I can't touch."

Danny groaned as Vlad fired one long, continuous blast at us, causing the dome to ripple like water. "Got any other super Avatar powers you haven't mentioned yet?" Danny finally managed to ask.

"Bending is only good against humans. Machines." Four of Vlad were shooting at us now from different directions. I rotated so that Danny and I were back to back. "Things you can hit with rocks and fire."

"I thought you had spirits in your world, too."

"No spirits I've ever met fought like this."

"Don't you have some way to fight spirits in your world?"

I started to answer, "Sure, I...", but my mind turned mid-thought. What I'd been about to say gave me an idea. The one way I knew how to fight powerful dark spirits... No, it was crazy – why should ghosts in this world be anything like spirits in mine? There was no reason to think it would work the same way... But earlier, hadn't Danny and I marveled at how similar ghosts from the Ghost Zone were to spirits from the Spirit World? Maybe ghosts would respond the same way...

Danny got tired of waiting for me. "What? What is it?"

He knew ghosts better than I did – I'd let him decide if it was worth a try. "I do know this one trick for fighting powerful dark spirits in my world. But I don't know if it'll work on ghosts. Let alone something half-human."

"Dark spirits?" Danny repeated. "I'd say he qualifies, wouldn't you?"

"If you say so." I turned around. "I need a large body of water."

"Water?" Danny contemplated my request for a second. "Okay, grab hold and hang on. We're gonna have to make this fast."

I put my arms around his shoulders from behind and braced myself, pretty sure I knew where this was going. Danny waited until one of our attackers circled in front of him, then, in one move, dropped the shield, fired an energy blast at him with both hands, turned us both intangible, and shot up from the ground like a geyser, me clinging to his back for dear life. I'm not ashamed of how I yelled as we took off (the sudden motion would have been shocking enough even if we hadn't been under attack from all sides), but we escaped unharmed. I felt the weight of tangibility return as Danny changed direction and sped away like an arrow to wherever we were going.

Never having flown like this before (Tenzin had adamantly refused all my requests to try such a thing when I was a child), at first, I was afraid to move a muscle. The sound of something rushing through the air behind us made me force myself to turn my head. At least we only had one pursuer (why divide yourself when you only had one target to chase?). "We've got company!" I yelled.

"Hold tight!" was all Danny yelled back before he turned over, leaving me dangling underneath him, clinging to his shoulders, screaming from the shock of my new position, as he fired two shots at Vlad. Vlad dodged them both, but the action slowed his progress a little. I screamed again as Danny turned back over, placing me on his back again.

Once I got my breath, I said, "A little warning would have been nice!"

"Fine, next time I'll just let him catch us!"

I groaned and mumbled, "I miss my glider," before it was Danny's turn to dodge the shots coming at us from behind. He let Vlad gain on us for a few seconds before turning us both invisible, then angling up. Once Vlad had passed underneath us, still going in the direction we'd been heading, Danny turned around, flying in the completely opposite direction.

Once Danny let us turn visible again, I decided it was safe to speak. "Good trick!"

Danny, however, said, "He'll see through it in no time, but it'll buy us a few seconds!"

It wasn't long before I noticed the familiar reflection of the stars and moon on the ground up ahead. Almost as soon as I spotted it, Danny started descending. We landed on a waterfront lined with wooden docks, facing a line of anchored boats, surrounded by warehouses.

Our feet had barely touched the shore when Danny said, "Will this do?" Almost instantly, a figure rose through the dock in front of us, hovering above it, the glow surrounding it fading to reveal a short, stout, round-faced man. He started to yell something at us that sounded like, "BEWA-", but Danny screamed, "Not NOW!", and shot an energy blast right at him. He disappeared, but Danny was still gritting his teeth, his eyes narrowed in frustration, until we heard something speeding towards us from out of the sky, causing us both to turn at the same time. Danny had guessed right – Vlad must not have gone very far before he realized he'd find us if he went the opposite way. He hadn't even bothered to turn invisible.

I turned my back completely on the water and took up a defensive stance, never taking my eyes off Vlad. "Get clear," I warned Danny. "Stay out of sight, and stay far away from me, no matter what." He didn't ask for details but flew into the shadow of the nearest warehouse and, with his back against its wall, turned invisible.

Fortunately, Vlad must have been too far away to see which way Danny went in the dark. Once he was close enough that I could make out his glare fixed solely in my direction, I shot two streams of flame at him. He easily swerved away from them and fired back. I somersaulted to the right, careful not to get farther away from the water, letting loose with a blast of air as I righted myself. After Vlad dodged that attack, he asked, "Where's Daniel?"

I didn't answer, unless you count the fireballs I shot at him. They were a fraction too high, and he flew down to escape them – exactly as I'd hoped. If I'd aimed at him, he would have shielded himself or turned intangible, but by aiming just above him, I got him to gradually fly lower as he dodged the shots, until he finally landed on the ground and fired a blast of red energy directly at my face. I raised a wall of rock out of the ground in front of the dock and ducked as the blast shattered it instead of my head.

When I rose, Vlad was laughing at me. "It will take more than your elemental tricks to intimidate me, young lady..."

He was close enough now, partly distracted, and confident I posed no threat. As soon as he started talking, with one motion, I pulled a huge stream of water up from behind me and struck him with the same move that won my last complete Pro-Bending match. I did catch him off guard and, before he could turn intangible, was able to freeze the water around him. I knew it would only hold him for a second, but that was all I needed.

In one second, I had him firmly encased in a thick layer of ice. In the next, I had more streams of water rising from behind me and surrounding him. Vlad easily turned intangible and flew forward out of the chunk of ice, but he stopped within the ribbons of water flowing through the air around him, still laughing. "I would have thought you were too smart to think that could hold me."

I didn't respond – I was too busy concentrating. I felt the familiar build up and flow of energy as I always did when I used this move. His tone changed as the water started to glow. "What is this?" I heard him wonder. "What's going on here? Hey... ah!" A distant part of my mind judged the technique must be having some effect on him, but I didn't have the freedom to observe further. I had to focus.

The ribbons of water were fully aglow now. Vlad's gasps and grunts gave way to one long, continuous scream of terror – could he sense what I was doing? He seemed immobilized inside the watery net. I could feel the positive and negative energy begin to separate, ready to be rejoined in their proper ratio. The screams grew louder. Even though my eyes were open, I couldn't focus on the outside world very much, but I could make out the figure of a man within the energized water. He seemed to be dividing in two, or something transparent but human-shaped was separating from him, starting at the head and the break spreading slowly down his neck and shoulders. They resisted the separation, coming back together, but then they would start to pull apart again.

I don't know if they were the first words he spoke, but the first words I heard were, "Stop! Please! It's agonizing! Please, stop it! I'll do anything! Just stop! I can't stand the pain!"

I instinctively released my control and dropped my hands, horrified by what I was seeing and hearing. I'd never seen that move cause spirits pain before – I hadn't meant to hurt him like that at all! The water splashed to the ground, and Vlad fell to his knees, clutching his throat and gasping for breath. Danny reappeared in the same spot he'd vanished and flew next to me. "What happened?" he asked.

"I don't know," I confessed.

Both of us kept our eyes on Vlad. He rose slowly to his feet and said, "That was close," then raised his head, grinning as smugly as ever. "I almost thought you'd be too smart to fall for that."

I growled through my clenched teeth, furious at myself. It was a trick! I could feel an eruption of flame ready to burst from my fists, but he beat me to it, rising into the air and firing one final shot, not at me but at Danny. It looked like Danny tried to raise a small green wall in front of him to block it, but he wasn't quite fast enough this time, and the blast knocked him down. I stepped in front of him and raised two fire daggers before me, but Vlad didn't attack again. He said nonchalantly, "You should have chosen your allies more wisely, Avatar Korra," then drifted away, saluting me with two fingers, before vanishing from sight.

I knelt down beside Danny. "You all right?" I asked.

"I'll be fine." He groaned in pain as he tried to stand up, and I pushed his shoulder down.

"Wait a second," I said, turning to the bay behind us. With a swoop of my arm, I pulled a stream of water up and over to us.

"What are you... uh..." Danny's question dissolved in nervous confusion as I placed the water against his chest with both my hands, sensing his heart rate speed up at the same time (boys...). He didn't say another word while I knelt there, the water glowing as I spread my energy throughout his body, feeling his numerous injuries repair themselves under my influence.

When I was done, I flung the water back in the bay. "Better?" I asked.

"Much better," Danny whispered in disbelief as he felt his chest, his shoulder, the back of his neck. "I feel great."

"That was the idea," I said with a grin as I pulled him to his feet, then looked up around us. "Where did Plasmius go?"

Danny folded his arms and scowled. "Probably home to his mansion in Wisconsin, or his mansion in Colorado, or some other mansion who-knows-where to plan his next move. What did you do to him anyway?"

"It's a technique for healing dark spirits," I explained. "In my world, it purges the darkness from them. Corrects the imbalance that makes them want to attack you so they're no longer a threat."

"But with him, it looked like you were... you were..."

Danny couldn't seem to find a way to describe it, so I suggested, "Like I was separating his spirit from his body."

"Or separating his ghost half from him."

That made sense, but I didn't really care at the moment. "I can't believe I let him get away! I shouldn't have stopped. If only I'd kept going..." I was a good thing I said that, because it distracted me from my anger at myself as I realized I had no idea what would have been the result if I'd been able to finish the ritual, since it clearly didn't have quite the same effect on him that it had on spirits. "I wonder what would have happened if I'd been able to remove his ghost half entirely."

Danny sighed and, suddenly looking downcast, said, almost mournfully, "You'd be surprised," then added, in a different tone, "At least you scared him away. Now that he knows you can do that, he'll stay as far away from you as he can. How's Jazz?"

"She'll be fine," I assured him. "But we should get back to your house now. I still need to heal her."

"Okay, let's go." I let Danny scoop me into his arms again, and we rose into the air. I half expected Vlad to be waiting to ambush us, but it looked like he really had retreated. Danny obviously had no such worries – his only concern now was for his sister. "You sure Jazz is all right?"

"I can tell you she has no more metal left in her bloodstream, and, aside from a cut in her arm, she was completely safe when I left her."

He sighed deeply, and I felt a load of tension leave his shoulders. "I can't thank you enough, Korra."

"Don't mention it."

"But you risked your life for us, and I barely know you..."

I had to laugh at that. "Really? Seems to me like we know everything about each other." That got a weak grin out of Danny. "Look, this kind of thing is what I'm supposed to do. Don't worry about me."

Danny obviously ignored that, because he said next, "I don't know what we would've done without you."

"You would've thought of something," I told him sincerely. "I've seen what you can do." That reminded me... "By the way, why couldn't you use that sound attack you used on Walker against Plasmius? Looked pretty effective to me."

Danny didn't answer me right away. "Okay, how do I put this? My Ghostly Wail's my most powerful attack. It's pretty much a one-hit-kill. It's strong enough that, when I use it, just about everyone except Vlad goes down for the count. In fact, I can only use it if I know for sure it'll put them down for the count because it completely drains me. After I use it, I almost always run out of power and change back to my human form. That probably sounds useless to you, doesn't it? It's my strongest power, I just have to be really careful how I use it. It's hard to explain..."

"So when you use it, you're at your most powerful but also your most vulnerable?"

"Okay, I guess it's not hard to explain."