We meet again, awesome readers! In case you missed it the other ten times I said it: I do not own Legend of Korra. Enjoy. :)

Chapter 11: A Supernatural Disaster

Mako's head pounded with a viciousness he'd never encountered. For a full ten seconds he allowed himself to keep his eyes shut, feeling the bursts of fire explode inside his skull. When it became clear that nothing would help the pain, not lying still and certainly not getting up, he forced his way back into the world of the conscious. The moon stared down at him from a slanted angle in the sky. Mako took a deep breath, clawing through the pain in his head as he tried to think clearly. Something was wrong, very wrong. And he'd obviously been in a fight. Korra must have been—Korra!

Mako was up and stumbling along the street in seconds. He'd only gone a few yards when the pain in his head hit a crescendo. It pounded with such splitting agony that it really might have been preferable to have his head cleaved in two. The pain made him double over, clutching his head with both arms. Fighting back a scream he crawled to the ground, filled with more pain, misery, and self-loathing than he had ever thought possible. "I lost her. I lost her." The thought ran circles in his addled brain until he moaned it out loud. Each word came out shaking, along with the rest of him. "I l-lost her." For Mako, it was an irreparable fact.

On another side of Republic City…

Korra had never been the kind to regain consciousness all at once. She could speak with some authority on the matter because, frankly, she'd made the journey between blackness and being awake more times than she cared to remember. It usually happened slowly. She'd start to hear sounds; her vision would return in dim flashes, and gradually, she would wake up.

This was not "usually."

She awoke with a jolt, throwing herself against the bonds that held her and immediately becoming aware of the excruciating pain that anchored her to reality. She bit her cheek. Pain was good, she told her panicking mind. Pain would keep her sharp, help her fight. Her nervous system continued to disagree. So she compartmentalized, shoving the pain back to a place where it could be felt, but ignored. She needed to think. A foul dampness hung in the air, coupled with the stomach-wrenching scent of burned flesh. It was her own skin that had been burned, she realized. The leg of her pants still singed, just above the knee, and a jagged red line of flesh was exposed through the missing fabric.

The room was dark, and it took a minute for her eyes to adjust. It was small and made entirely of concrete from floor to ceiling. There were no windows, just a single heavily wooded door directly in front of her. It had been swung halfway open. If she was going to escape, she would have to go through the rest of this building.

Outside the door she could make out muddled voices.

"He's incapacitated."

"Still?" a second voice inquired.

"Yes."

"Let him be then. Enough time has elapsed that he won't be able to find us. We'll leave in three days anyway."

"We could just kill him. He's no use to us."

Were they talking about Mako? She strained her ears even harder. Please let him be alright. There was an unbearable pause before the second voice answered again, sounding thoughtful.

"No. He'll cause more of a calamity if he's dead. Just leave him be."

"As you wish."

Korra breathed a sigh of relief, hoping the voices would go on. Was Mako there with her? Was he in another room? Was he hurt?

"She's awake."

The voice bellowed from behind and to her left. Korra jerked her head around, straining to see her captor. A knuckly man leered down at her. Before she could react more people entered the room, and Korra twisted back to center, eyeing the man at the head of the group as evenly as he eyed her.

He wore a white linen suit that bulged over excess flesh. His eyes were small and blood shot, sunken into his face and shrouded by flushed cheeks.

The man smiled. It was a cordial smile that felt absurdly out of place, as if he were greeting a lifelong friend rather than a beaten girl who was, at present, chained to a metal chair.

"Shen," he said, holding out his hand and offering another beatific smile.

Korra puzzled at the hand for an instant, wondering what, exactly, he expected. There was no way she could shake it, chained as she was. It was a brief moment; Korra quickly decided she didn't care. Anger surged through her and she spat on his outstretched palm.

Shen's lip curled up in disgust. One of the men behind him offered up a towel, and he wiped his hand with it before turning his attention back to Korra.

"You will learn some respect, Avatar." He hissed her title, his eyes turning black and inhuman. He curled his fist and pain gripped Korra's head, her vision swimming. She clenched her teeth. I will not scream. I will not scream.

But she did. She screamed for a full minute before Shen released his fist and her entire body slumped forward. She could barely lift her head, but she forced the words through her teeth.

"What are you?"

Shen laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound. "In due time, Avatar. In due time. Suffice to say that you are going to be very valuable to us."

One of the men from the back of the room pressed his way forward, whispering in Shen's ear. He nodded before turning back to her.

"Get some rest Avatar. We'll speak again." He glanced at the guard still in the back of the room. His eyes flashed and he mouthed something she couldn't make out.

With that he turned and left, his men filing out of the room behind him.

"Wait!" Korra called desperately. She let pain infuse her voice, pushing past her pride and making herself sound…broken. It was the only way she might get them to tell her what she needed to know.

Shen paused in the doorway, glancing at her.

She took her opportunity. "The boy, the one who was with me, is he…"

She slumped even more. It wasn't a difficult show to put on. All she had to do was let herself feel the pain and fear and the hopelessness that was already there.

Shen considered her for a moment. "Alive," he said at last. "We have no use for him." He turned to leave, calling out one last phrase over his shoulder. "You will never see him again."

Alive. It was the most beautiful word she had ever heard. Mako was alive, and not here, she surmised.

The room emptied and remained dark. She had no way to measure the passing of time, but it felt like hours she sat there, unwilling to sleep as the guard stood in the back corner of the room. Korra had never considered herself a master strategist, but eventually she came up with a plan. It would hurt, but she didn't quite care. All she needed was for it to work.

The metal chair she was chained to wasn't too far from the back wall. She pushed the chair backwards incrementally in movements she hoped would be too small to notice. When the chair was, at last, angled up against the wall, she put her plan into motion. Gritting her teeth she slammed her body against the wall with all her might. There was a loud pop as her shoulder slid out of socket. She gasped in pain, her eyes tearing. She had all of two seconds to pull off this next part. That was how long she estimated it would take for the guard to reach her: two seconds. She wriggled her torso, sliding her dislocated shoulder through the chains at an unnatural angle. When the chains fell off she pulled her other arm free and rammed the wall again. It hurt like hell, but her shoulder popped back into socket. The guard was on her. He smacked her face with the back of his hand and light exploded across one eye. She bent up chunks of earth from the floor, covering the guard's mouth and fastening him to the wall.

She held her breath. The guard struggled, but his restraints held. He tried to scream and the sound came out muffled. It worked.

It took another two minutes to get fully free of the chains. When she did, she crept over to the door. It was locked from the inside. She found a pair of keys in the pocket of her guard. He struggled, but she freed them and slid the key into the lock.

She swung the door open a centimeter at a time, peeking her uninjured eye through the crack. Two men walked down the hallway going in the opposite direction of her cell. Korra froze.

"Did you send Lee to check the facility where the benders are being held?"

"Yes sir. He returned yesterday evening. He reported that the station was secure and the captives are being prepared for departure."

"Good. Tell Captain Teike that everything is proceeding as scheduled."

The two men rounded a corner and their voices drifted out of hearing. Korra exhaled heavily. The hallway looked clear. She crept out of the room. Every step felt like a knife to her left leg, and her head still ached as if someone had been hitting it with a sledge hammer. Don't think about it, she chided herself. Instead of focusing on the pain, Korra focused on fear: the fear of getting caught, of failing as an Avatar, of losing Mako…she took all that, and channeled it into adrenaline. If there was one thing she had learned in her 17 years as the Avatar, it was that there are few things as motivating as fear. It was now or never.

She broke into a run down the hallway. Taking advantage of the fact that her captors had taken her shoes, she used earthbending to get a sense of the grounds. She made a right turn and kept sprinting, urging her burning lungs to work harder. She was almost to the exit when she heard a pursuit behind her.

She chanced a look over her shoulder. Three men dressed in the same clothes as the guard in her cell were running after her. From the looks of it, they were gaining ground.

Just a little further, she begged her body. Her left leg shook each time it hit the floor. Please don't give out. You can do it. It felt like begging a mountain to dance.

She paused just long enough to bend a powerful spiral of wind at the wooden door blocking her way out. It collapsed with a bang. The sky outside was barely beginning to lighten, just bright enough for Korra to see that she was at the harbor, and that there was a pier to her right. More people had now been alerted of her escape, and the sounds of calamity swelled from the building.

Water. It could save her. She sprinted in the direction of the bay. Her pursuers had not slackened. They chased her down the pier. The planked wood seemed to stretch on endlessly, but at last she could see the water shimmering just a few steps ahead. One of the guards caught the back of her shirt, his nails clawing her skin. She threw herself forward desperately, letting all of her body weight lean towards the water. She heard the fabric rip, and she plummeted face first into the bay. She used waterbending to push herself as deep as possible, going in the opposite direction of the splashes she heard above. She got as far away as she could, waiting until her lungs were screaming before taking the time to bend herself a small bubble of air. She took a moment, deep under the water to get her bearings. They would be looking for her, but where? In the end she decided to circle around the city and emerge at a little known strip past the harbor.

When she found her way to the bank it was well past sunrise. Korra dragged herself half out of the water and collapsed, her cheek pressed into wet sand. Every muscle ached, begging for rest. But she couldn't stop. She needed to find Mako, to make sure he was okay. She refused to consider any alternative situation. She would find Mako and he would be okay. She could keep moving long enough to do that.

To be continued…

Well, this chapter should give you plenty to wonder about. I would like to extend a huge thank you to my beta reader for going through this latest installment and fixing my mistakes. Did everyone notice the impeccable grammar? Yea, I can't take credit for that. Wish I could, but I can't. I would also like to thank everyone who has followed and taken the time to read this story. You are all wonderful and I am extremely grateful for your interest. I would love to hear feedback from anyone who has something to say. Let me know what you're thinking and if you have any theories about what's going on here. There is some duplicity afoot! *rubs hands together and grins mysteriously*

Until next time—

Mgirl