Chapter 10: The Lower Ring

Asami hastily stuffed the last of the documents she needed in to her briefcase and left her office. When she rounded the corner at the end of the hallway she found a camera right in her face. It was being held on the shoulder of Zhu Li, and her husband was standing right next to her. Without skipping a beat, Varrick threw his arm over Asami's shoulders. "What a surprise! We were just coming to see you!" he said.

"Hey guys. I'm sorry but it's going to have to wait. I'm running late enough as it is," said Asami, barely slowing her walk. She opened the door to the stairwell and started going downstairs, Varrick, Zhu Li and their camera just behind her.

"Where are you headed? We'll come with you and film," said Varrick.

"No," replied Asami firmly. "I don't have time to talk about your docu-mover right now."

"We don't have to talk about it. We just have to film it!"

"Let us film today, just in case," said Zhu Li, still pointing the camera at Asami as they descended the stairs. "It's your first time visiting the lower ring for potential construction sites, right? If we end up making this mover you'll be glad we filmed it."

"How did you know it's my first day?"

"Your foreman told us last night," replied Varrick. "She's a real nice kid, by the way."

Asami sighed. She would have to have a little chat with her new foreman Koti about using discretion in telling random strangers about her daily schedules. "I really can't afford to argue with you about this right now. The tram car is leaving in five minutes."

"What a coincidence, we're headed for the tram too. We might as well walk over there together," said Varrick innocently.

"Fine, but turn the camera off."

"I'm not filming you, I'm filming the air around you," said Zhu Li. "I'm allowed to do that, aren't I?"

"You guys are so annoying. Fine, do whatever you want. Just don't get in my way." Asami walked past them, picking up the pace and heading towards the tram station. She didn't check to see if Varrick and Zhu Li were keeping up; she just focused on getting there in time.

At the station she learned that the two of them had apparently had no difficulty whatsoever in following her. Asami found a seat, and Varrick and Zhu Li sat directly across from her, facing her. "So what's the game plan?" asked Varrick. "Got any ideas on where to start this crazy project?"

"I'm not sure yet," said Asami, choosing to ignore the camera and go about her business as usual. "I've got some ideas, but I'm meeting Koti down in the lower ring to see which place is most urgent."

They rode down the track, making a stop at the middle ring where many more passengers got on the already packed vehicle. With many of the trams being forced to stop operations due to vine growth, the city was doing the best it could with only three trams instead of its usual eight. Some people had to commute quite a ways to reach a station where they could board one. Asami's new Future Industries office was only a few blocks from one of them, but it was a convenience she was paying top dollar for. Its rent was significantly higher than what she paid for her office in Republic City.

There were now too many people on the packed car to facilitate any meaningful conversation, so instead Zhu Li pointed the camera out the window and filmed the city going by.

It had changed a great deal since she and Korra had ridden down to the middle ring during the convention. Vines were clearly visible, peeking out of some extremely inconvenient places. Some streets were so dense with foliage that it was impossible to see the buildings.

Asami found it startling at first, though she quickly regained her equilibrium. She was so used to seeing the streets of Republic City, which were designed to complement the spirit vines, that seeing a city so jumbled and disorganized was a little disturbing. If she didn't know any better, she'd have said that the spirits must have picked some places because of how inconvenient it would be for the citizens of Ba Sing Se. But she had faith in her own ability to deal with spirits. None of the things she saw were insurmountable tasks.

At last the tram reached the bottom of the city, the lower ring. Asami, Varrick and Zhu Li all shuffled off the car to make room for passengers trying to go up to the higher rings. They reached the street outside the station and looked around, Zhu Li swinging the camera around before settling it on a young woman who had just hailed them from across the street. "Hey," shouted the woman, waving to Asami. "Asami!"

Asami waved back and the woman ran across the streets towards them. "Good morning Koti. Thanks for meeting me down here."

"No problem," said Koti. "It's easier for me to get down here than it is up there. Come on, my satomobile is parked around the corner."

Since Lee was staying in Republic City, Asami had promoted another exceptional member of her construction team to foreman in Ba Sing Se. Koti had been Asami's first choice for the job. Though she didn't have the professionalism and experience that Lee had, she was reliable, charming and easy-going. Not to mention, she was one of the greatest architects Asami had ever met. She'd designed and built buildings that were so beautiful that people stopped on the streets to look at them. Also impressive was her ability to haggle—Asami had seen Koti haggle with a materials supplier to almost half his original asking price. And finally, she was a native of Ba Sing Se, so she'd been more than willing to move back to her home city because all her friends and family still lived here. She was living in the middle ring near her parents; since Koti would spend far more time on construction sites than Asami would be, it made sense for her to keep a residence outside the upper ring.

"Thanks for letting these two know where I was, by the way," grumbled Asami as she gestured at Varrick and Zhu Li, who were climbing in to the back seat of the car.

"What do you mean?" asked Koti as she pulled the car away from the curb and drove towards their first stop on the tour of the lower ring. "They said they're making a mover about you. Shouldn't they know where you are so they can do that?"

"I haven't said yes to the mover yet," said Asami. "They just keep pointing that stupid camera in my face."

"Oh boy. I'm so sorry, boss. They totally lied to me. If I'd known that I never would have done it."

"You haven't said yes, but you haven't said no," chimed in Varrick from the back.

"Honestly boss, I think the fact that they're sitting in my back seat means you've pretty much said yes," laughed Koti. "You're not the kind of woman who lets people walk all over you. And by the way, I'd love to watch a mover about you."

"There it is!" cried Varrick, leaning forward to clumsily high five Koti between gear shifts. "You see? You've already got a fan club!"

Asami just sighed and shook her head.

Their first stop was an intersection not far from the tram station they had just come from. This had seemed an obvious place for Asami to look at because of the public transportation issues in the city. With this intersection fixed, it would help to ease the increased flow of traffic on the station. They parked and walked all around the area, investigating the damage from every angle. Overall it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Vines growing straight out of the ground had crumbled some of the pavement in the street, making it only one lane in most places. Examining the growth patterns of the vines, she deduced that they actually were growing along with the grain of the road, splitting the pavement like one splits lumber with an axe for firewood. "This is an easy fix," said Asami. She walked back to the car and set her briefcase on the hood, taking out her notebook and flipping to the page where she'd made notes on this intersection the night before. She skimmed the info there. "It's owned by the city so we don't have to involve any private businesses. I'm thinking we can widen the roads here and use the vines as street dividers."

She turned and walked back in to the middle of the intersection, pointing out the vines she was talking about, helping Koti to visualize what she was describing. Once Koti understood, they went back to the car and moved on to the next site. "Is that intersection going to be a priority?" asked Varrick from the back.

"I thought it might be, but now that I've seen it I'm not so sure. We've got three other sites to look at before I make a decision."

The next place was a mess. It was a hospital near the Great Wall that surrounded the entire city. The building looked as though the vines were its wallpaper. Koti had hardly stopped the car before Asami was out, walking towards the building and flipping through her notebook. "This is bad," she said, squinting up in to the sunlight.

"It is?" asked Koti. "I actually think it looks fine."

"The hospital is fine, but check out the wall up there." She pointed to the area she'd noticed.

Ba Sing Se's wall was built to fend off attackers, and fend off attackers it had certainly done, but not without taking some damage. About halfway up this section of the wall, there was a deep gouge in the stone, and inside the gouge, just peeking over the lip of the hole, were vines. And they weren't growing up the wall—they were coming from inside the wall. This could only mean that the vines had grown all through this section of the wall. Like the Earth Palace up above, its structural integrity was surely compromised.

"Oh," said Koti, the breath leaving her lungs. "Do you think anyone else has noticed that?"

"No," answered Asami. "Genly put this hospital on the urgent list because of all the vines on the building, but I can tell by the way they left the windows and doors exposed that the building isn't at risk. That wall, on the other hand, is a big problem." She went back to the car and grabbed her binoculars out of her briefcase, then went back and looked through them at the wall. "I don't understand," she muttered. "Where are they coming from? The vines always start at the bottom and move up, but how could they start underneath the bottom of a wall? They need air, just like any other plant."

She handed the binoculars to Koti so she could look and wandered back to the car, Varrick and Zhu Li following silently with the camera. When Koti rejoined her at the car, she said: "I don't know, boss. It's definitely odd."

"You know what else this means?" said Asami. "It means that Genly's information isn't comprehensive. There could be other things his intelligence missed. We're going to have to send out teams to inspect the city for ourselves."

As they drove to the next site, Asami mused that it wasn't just Korra who was going to have to recruit more help. She didn't have enough hands in the city to do a complete damage survey. She was currently only employing enough people to work three construction jobs at once, though she would increase that number as things got moving and picked up speed.

They spent all day in the lower ring. By the end of the day, she'd visited all four of the big problem sites… and determined that she needed to begin work immediately on three of them. Only the intersection she'd first visited wasn't urgent. The other three places were very alarming—the wall by the hospital, a water treatment facility that was being consumed by vines that were abnormally engorged with water, and a tram station where the vines were just beginning to crush the pillars that kept the track elevated from the rest of the city. She'd told Genly that she hoped to start on projects that would open up commerce again, but now she knew she was going to have her hands full just trying to prevent life-endangering disasters.

And that was only the lower ring. She'd gone through the folders on the middle and upper rings looking for potentially dangerous damage, and there had been at least three in the middle ring that she wanted to look at in the near future. In the upper ring there was only the Earth Palace, but she'd have to send out teams to check both of the two inner rings more thoroughly. This was shaping up to be much more complicated than she'd anticipated.

There was something off about the city of Ba Sing Se. Asami couldn't put her finger on it, but something didn't feel right to her. Everything she'd seen that day was troubling, and she needed to figure out why.

She needed to talk to Korra. Korra could always help her understand her gut feelings.

Just as Asami was about to get in the car to head back to the tram station, something caught her eye in a tangle of spirit bushes nearby. There was something pearly-white hidden among the leaves. "Hold on one second," she said to the others, and she went over to investigate.

She knelt down next to the bush and saw what looked like a spirit, except it wasn't moving. It looked a little like Bumi's friend Muu Juu, but it was completely colorless. Its entire body was a strange mix of translucent and opaque, as if the spirit had been entirely filled with thick white smoke. It was one of the strangest things Asami had ever seen.

"Hey buddy," she said softly, pushing aside the branches so she could get a better look. "Are you okay?"

The spirit did not answer. Slowly, Asami put her hand in the bush to touch the spirit. But the moment her hand would have made contact with its little body, it... popped. That was the only word to describe it. The spirit popped, and all the smoke was released in to the air, vanishing as it rose towards the sky. Asami, who was wearing heeled boots and balancing in a crouch, nearly fell backwards in surprise.

"What the heck was that?!" said Varrick from behind her, and Asami jumped and this time actually lost her balance, landing ungracefully on her butt.

Placing her hand over her racing heart, she looked up at Varrick and Zhu Li, squinting when the camera's lens caught the glare of the setting sun. "I have no idea," she replied. "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I'm really glad you guys were filming that. Can you do me a favor and get me a copy of the footage? I think I should show that to Korra."

"Sure," said Zhu Li.

Asami stood and brushed off her clothing. "Alright. It's late and I'm getting tired and hungry. Do you mind taking us back to the station, Koti?"

"You got it, boss."