"So what makes you so sure that they're out here?" Ashur asked Amon, when the silence on the truck became too much for him to bear.

They had left the city almost as soon as Ashur had told Amon what was going on. There was almost no time to prepare, and they had only stopped to pick up the Lieutenant, a dozen masked Equalists and a few trucks to transport them.

The atmosphere had quickly become oppressive, and not just because it was snowing and the sky was grey. The others on the truck weren't talkative. Ashur quite liked snow, he had to admit. It was a far purer white than he was had been lead to believe, without the ashmounts tainting it. As such, it was feeling similar to home, and so he was the only one willing to speak at the moment.

When it had started snowing, Ashur had reacted with quite a bit of interest. Interest that immediately marked him as having never seen it before. While it was a bit more personal than the information he usually liked to give out, it had rewarded him by people asking if he had come from the Fire Nation. It hinted that The Final Empire was in that direction, since it was warmer and had its own ashmounts. He hadn't followed up on it, since he hadn't the time nor inclination at the moment, but it was something he had stored away for future reference.

Amon said nothing, passively watching the road ahead through his mask. He, Ashur and the Lieutenant were sitting on the back of one of the trucks, waiting as they were being driven out. Ashur turned to the other quiet man for an explanation, and was relieved to actually get one.

"We've been following the movements of the Council closely recently, in order to enact the next part of our plan," the masked man explained. "From what we have observed of Tarrlok recently, he exited the city in this direction recently and returned from the same gate at the supposed time of the attack. We set off in this direction, gambling on that, and so we aren't too far behind him."

"So why do we need so many people for this?" Ashur asked. "Surely this would be better as a covert operation? The more people we have, the more chance there is for the Benders to realise something is wrong." And not only that, but the general stock of the Equalist mook squad was shoddy at best. They simply weren't fighters, unlike most Benders who had trained all their lives.

"We're expecting the Benders to realise what has happened quite quickly. They won't be as fast as we will be, but we don't know how long a window we will need to retrieve the Avatar," he continued. "We may have to end up leaving some of us behind in order to achieve our long-term goals. Everyone knows what they may be called on for here."

"Not me," Ashur muttered, but only to himself. He could easily escape in the middle of the wild, even in the snow. He didn't know the terrain, but as long as they snow wasn't too deep, he should be able to steelpush his way out of here with relative ease. "But it's still a bit of a risk, isn't it?"

"But if we do get attacked, we will be glad we took it," the Lieutenant finished.

The rest of the journey was silent. When the vehicle stopped, Ashur found that they had followed him to a small wooden cabin that was pretty much placed in the middle of nowhere. There was a single set of tire tracks other than their own, and they led to another van parked outside.

"Inside," Amon nodded to his men before walking up to the door. They replied with an affirmative each, and followed him.

The inside of the cabin was sparsely decorated, as if someone had given it the semblance of being lived in but no more. Considering this was probably the Councilman's safehouse, it made perfect sense. And there, coming up a set of stairs that led into a dark basement, was the man of the hour himself.

"Amon!" He said, eyes widening in fear, before being replaced with a small amount of confidence.

"It is time for you to be Equalised," Amon said, not moving from his pose with his arms behind his back. It was a stance that assumed superiority over the others in the room.

The others prepared themselves to fight, but Ashur did not, not immediately. With the numbers they had, there was pretty much no need to fight. He doubted Tarrlok would give himself up, but the result would be the same either way.

"You fool," Tarrlok said, a laugh rising into his voice as he raised his arms. It seemed somewhat like he was controlling puppet-strings, to Ashur's eyes. "You've never faced Bending like mine." Ashur couldn't help but find his arrogance amusing.

As the dozen Equalists that had followed Amon into the building, including Ashur, walked forwards, he felt a sudden pressure from within himself. It was as though his blood was forcing him to move, controlling all of his limbs. It was painful, very painful, and he couldn't fight against it. He flared pewter, which took some of the pain away, but it was still too strong for him to resist.

This was Bloodbending's power, he realised with horror. This was why the Lieutenant feared and hated it so much.

A footstep brought him to attention. He was not unconcious, like some of the others, and he was just able to move his head to be able to look up. Amon walked forward, uncaring. Tarrlok looked confused and worried that someone was able to resist him.

Ashur burnt bronze. Not only did he wonder what Bloodbending's pulse felt like (unsurprisingly, as similar to water as metal was to earth and lightning was to fire), but there was only one reason he could think of that allowed Amon to walk forward like that. It was quickly confirmed by the pulses coming from both of them.

Whatever puppetry Tarrlok was able to enforce on their bodies, Amon was using it as well on himself in order to control his own body. It was the only thing that made sense, with what he was sensing using the mental metal.

The pulse from Tarrlok strengthened, as if he was flaring a metal, and Amon bent slightly at the knees and slowed down, an agonising crunching noise coming from his bones. But it wasn't to last, as Amon's own pulse strengthened in turn, enough to overpower Tarrlok's Bending.

"What... What are you?" Tarrlok asked in fear as he took a step back.

"I am the solution," Amon replied, before he took threw Tarrlok onto his knees. Amon then placed one hand around Tarrlok's neck and placed his other hand on his forehead. There was a moment of silence in the cabin before Amon too Tarrlok's Bending in the usual manner, with his own Bloodbending.

Ashur pushed himself to his knees, the pain slowly lessening as he did so. He stopped burning bronze as he thought about what he had seen. It was truly a terrifying experience. He didn't think he had any way to stop it being used against him or any other Mistborn either, since it was a purely physical experience. Copperclouding only affected mental metals, after all.

Amon issued an order to the Lieutenant to get the Avatar from the floor below, but Ashur drowned it out with his thoughts. They could deal with a caged girl.

If Amon was a Bloodbender, that left one of two possibilities. The first was that Amon truly hated Bending in all its forms, and only used his Bloodbending in order to remove the ability from the face of the earth completely. He was becoming a monster for the sake of everyone else. He wasn't making a martyr of himself, since he was keeping it quiet, but he was one all the same.

The other possibility, and the one that was more likely in Ashur's suspicious opinion, was that Amon was removing Bending so that he was the only one left with it, in a similar manner to how the nobility were the only ones allowed to use Allomancy, and any skaa Allomancers were killed to stop it spreading any further.

Actually, that didn't have to be his specific goal. Amon was building himself a nice little power base from which he could take Republic City, and perhaps even further. It could be that his Bending was just the means to the goal, rather than part of the goal itself.

Either way, it was something he could use as blackmail material, to destabilise the Equalists. Of course, the movement wouldn't collapse from that single revelation, but it would certainly lose momentum.

It wouldn't do too good to use that ace at the moment though. On the whole, removing Bending from the city and everywhere else but having a single Bloodbender around was a better situation than there being any number of potential Bloodbenders. Ashur had no doubt he could kill Amon, provided he could do it without being detected.

But what if Amon could sense where anyone was around him? It would mean that a sneak attack would be impossible because he could always sense your blood. And in addition to that, if the first attack failed, then the second attack would be impossible to go through.

The best idea was probably to kill him from a range. Ashur had no idea how long a distance Bloodbending worked over, but he was willing to bet it was smaller than that of a good steelpush. All he needed to do was buy some sharper weaponry than his coins. Small darts perhaps, possibly with some poison to dip the tips in if he could obtain it somehow.

It wasn't that his coins weren't dangerous enough on their own. No, coins were very often used by anyone who could burn steel as a lethal weapon. The problem was that Ashur was smaller than most Allomancers who utilised that tactic, and he needed to definitely kill. In a fight, a debilitating but nonlethal wound was better than an outright death at times, whereas this would be an assassination.

There was always the possibility that Amon might accept life under The Lord Ruler, but it was extremely doubtful, especially if he truly was trying to take over for his own benefit. And there was also the fact that it was unlikely that any Benders would be left alive once this place was annexed anyway.

Then again, if the Equalists succeeded, there wasn't really any need to worry. Amon was, after all, just one man. A powerful man, yes, but he was nowhere near the level of The Lord Ruler himself.. All it would take was a group of Inquisitors, and Amon wouldn't be able to fight his way out.

"Ashur, get up," Amon muttered, cutting his thoughts off, as he picked Tarrlok up.

Ashur nodded, standing up as requested. His body still felt strange. "Sorry. I was just a little shaken by that," he admitted.

Amon sighed. "Bloodbending is truly the most evil of the Bending disciplines." He handed Tarrlok to Ashur. "We'll put him in the truck, for now. He should be unconcious for some time."

Ashur nodded, moving Tarrlok to redistribute the weight. He was surprised that Amon had given the fully grown man to him, considering Ashur didn't look too strong, but then he had demonstrated both his strength and endurance to Amon on multiple occassions, so perhaps it wasn't that weird. He probably needed to be ready to remove the Avatar's Bending anyway.

As Amon started to open the truck's doors so Ashur could throw the Councilman in, there was the sound of feet hitting snow at a run or a jump. The pair of them turned to see what the noise was, and Ashur was dismayed to see Korra had escaped from the others. They were truly worthless, weren't they?

Korra raised her arms, and icicles flew towards them, kicking up a sudden mist of snow and water into the air, impairing their vision. Ashur dropped their prisoner, since it didn't matter if he got speared through, and dodged the few that were in his direction. He followed Amon, catching up quickly and subsequently almost flying off the edge of the snowy hill when Amon suddenly stopped at the edge.

Ashur watched her form as she slowly got further and further away from where they were standing.

"I thought I told you not to underestimate her," Amon muttered to the Lieutenant as he appeared.

"I'm going after her," Ashur muttered as he took a few steps back to get more of a run up.

"No," Amon said, making the Mistborn stop and look up at him. "It would be hard enough to follow her down such a steep slope, and no-one should encounter the Avatar alone like this."

"I've already defeated her once," Ashur replied. Admittedly, it was with atium, but the Avatar looked half-dead as it was anyway. As for the other part, he was pretty certain that pewter would stop him from tumbling down uncontrollably.

"It's doubtful that she would be able to survive in the forest anyway," the Lieutenant added, no doubt wanting to make up for his previous failure. "No-one knows where she was other than us."

"I'd rather we didn't take that risk," Ashur replied. "I'll bring her to the headquarters."

Amon turned to look at Ashur, then nodded once. "Alive," he instructed, before walking back over to their transportation, "or not at all."

Ashur sighed. "If I must," he muttered, before jumping.

Yeah, the first proper deviation starts now, I suppose. Originally I'd written this scene to follow the original plotline, but honestly I realised that was a little stupid, when one considers the skills that Ashur's already displayed to his leader. Amon didn't go after Korra at all in the show, despite the fact that he easily could have. Even the Equalists could've probably climbed down the hill with little difficulty if they took it slow. No reasons were given, and it just seemed as though the writers dug themselves into a little bit of a hole.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I keep seeing small flaws in how the Equalists act. And yet, despite this, they almost win. It's really quite worrying.